As Crickhowell recovers from the excitement of the annual Totally Locally Christmas Market, the local children are looking forward to the next big local event - St Edmund’s Nativity Trail.

The history of the event began at St Edmund’s Church’s Crib service in 2012 when a whole flock of knitted sheep got lost in the shops of Crickhowell in December and the local children were invited to search for them.

In subsequent years they have searched for angels, kings and camels. This year shepherds seemed to be the obvious choice and 28 knitted gentlemen and ladies will be found at various points around the town from Friday, December 11).

Children need to collect a form either from their school or from the church (or online at stedscrick.org), find the shepherds, fill in their names and return the form to the church or the CrIC by noon on December 23.

This year TotesAmazeBells, the Church’s youth group has written the shepherd-themed Nativity play and will be performing it as part of the service at 4 pm on Christmas Eve.

At the end of the service, the results of the prize draw to win the shepherds will be announced.

St Edmund’s new children and families’ worker, Mairwen Large said, “This is my first year organising the Nativity trail and I am delighted that so many in the congregation have been keen to knit and at how enthusiastic all the local shops have been to host a shepherd.

She added, The Crib service is my favourite Christmas tradition and I am really looking forward to December 24, as is one child I met recently who said she had the complete collection of nativity figures to date and would be round the shops straight after school on Friday as she wanted the whole set!

Good luck all of you!