"Five days of roots and folk music in the Welsh hills, where the campfire matters as much as the stage and the stars are genuinely good."

Fire in the Mountain

"Top of the Pups dog show, hog roast, cream teas, and a licensed bar on the grounds of a Cotswolds manor. The afternoon is the point."

Cowley Village Fete

"A Hertfordshire market town's CAMRA festival at the Rugby Club: three days, dozens of ales and ciders, and a town that always seemed like it ought to have a good beer festival."

Hitchin Beer and Cider Festival

"Three days at Ardingly covering everything from champion cattle to homemade chutneys. One of the south's great annual gatherings."

South of England Show

"A long-running city folk weekend that fills the pubs with song, and by Saturday evening spills, quietly, into the streets."

St Albans Folk Festival

"The 18th running in Shakespeare's town: real ales and ciders across two days in a setting that already draws visitors for far less interesting reasons than this."

Stratford-upon-Avon Beer and Cider Festival

"Since 1612: straw in the socks, hands on each other's shoulders, and the aim is to kick shins until someone falls. Judges wear top hats."

World Shin-Kicking Championships

"A walled park, 100+ local producers, and an afternoon that has a habit of turning into a very good evening."

South Downs Food Festival

"A small village market on the green in one of the prettiest villages in the Howardian Hills. Every first Saturday of the month."

Hovingham Farmers Market

"First Saturday of the month on the Memorial Gardens, with local produce, music and the steep stone streets of a former lead mining town climbing away on every side."

Wirksworth Farmers' Market

"A neighbourhood that takes its food seriously, doing what neighbourhoods should do on the first Sunday morning of every month."

Chapel Allerton Farmers Market

"A folk festival in a Norfolk field. The name is the description. Exactly what it sounds like, which is exactly what you want."

Folk in a Field

"Cambridge Street on a Thursday morning: local producers, unhurried browsing, and an excellent reason to be somewhere beautiful."

Harrogate Farmers Market

"The largest free nautical music festival in Europe. The whole harbour town sings, in pubs and on quaysides, all weekend long."

Falmouth Sea Shanty Festival

"Folk music at a ruined 13th-century castle on the Gower peninsula, with the estuary below and the sky doing something remarkable above."

Gower Folk Festival

"A small Highland village fills with musicians every June. The mountains are the backdrop and the sessions go late."

Killin Music Fest

"A proper countryside fair in the Surrey Hills: farm animals, tractor rides, traditional countryside skills, artisan producers and live music around an agricultural college with views over the Downs."

Surrey Hills Country Fair

"Mid-Wales's great one-day gathering: over 1,700 entries, national-standard sheep competitions, and the particular energy of a Welsh agricultural show that genuinely matters to the people in it."

Aberystwyth and Ceredigion County Show

"On a Willaston school field every June, charmers coax worms to the surface with garden forks and music inside a marked plot, eighteen solemn rules and a world record over five hundred worms in half an hour."

World Worm Charming Championships

"An honest market town doing what market towns do, on the second Sunday of every month. The kind of morning that stays with you."

Bedale Farmers Market

"Two days on the Cheshire Plain where the county's farming tradition meets its food obsession: supreme cattle champions, extraordinary local cheesemakers, and a show that has been held at Tabley since 1949."

Royal Cheshire County Show

"Scotland's greatest show. Livestock, land machinery, Highland dancing, and malt whisky in the sun, if you happen to be lucky."

Royal Highland Show

"The grounds of a Tudor manor house, local artisan producers, chef demonstrations, and a weekend that develops a habit of producing purchases you hadn't planned on."

Surrey Country & Craft Food Show

"A harbour town that comes properly alive in midsummer, stalls on the quayside, live music, and the smell of the sea all day."

Emsworth Summer Festival

"Broad Street in a cress-farm town, third Sunday of the month. Everything local. Nothing superfluous. The right kind of Sunday."

Alresford Farmers Market

"A single-day show at Otterington Hall that quietly holds its own against the bigger county shows, Dales livestock, local producers, and that specifically North Yorkshire sense of unhurried competence."

North Yorkshire County Agricultural Show

"Three days of Cornwall at its most itself: cattle, cream teas, local crafts, and the Atlantic light slanting over the showground."

Royal Cornwall Show

"Livestock, horticulture and countryside pursuits at the foot of the Malvern Hills. Three counties, one great show."

Royal Three Counties Show

"The great flat-county show: machinery, livestock, and vast quantities of local produce under an enormous Lincolnshire sky."

Lincolnshire Show

"Two days of East Anglia at its proudest: livestock, machinery, food, and the particular flat-sky light of a Norfolk June."

Royal Norfolk Show

"Gateway Square on the last Saturday of the month. New Forest produce, familiar faces, and no particular reason to rush home."

Ringwood Farmers Market

"Five wells dressed over several days in a Peak District village above Bradford Dale, with the blessing on the Saturday afternoon, Youlgrave has one of the most technically accomplished well-dressing traditions in Derbyshire."

Youlgrave Well Dressing

"On the last Saturday of the month the Agricultural Business Centre fills with Peak District producers, in the town that gave its name to the pudding."

Bakewell Farmers' Market

"The Cathedral of the Peak presides over a week of well dressing, carnival and a torchlight procession in a high limestone village."

Tideswell Wakes Week and Well Dressing

"Four wells dressed in flowers, seeds and clay by local hands, blessed on a June Sunday afternoon, and left to fade through the week. An ancient Derbyshire custom, unchanged."

Bakewell Well Dressing

"The Cathedral city's market, twice monthly. A Sunday morning with the High Street, the close, and nowhere better to be."

Winchester Market

"A market under the Hartley Wintney oaks on the last Sunday of the month, Hampshire smallholders and bakers in a famously leafy village on the old coaching road."

Hartley Wintney Farmers' Market

"On St Peter's Day the children of an Eden Valley village process to church in flower crowns and rush crosses, the girls crowned, the boys bearing crosses, a quiet survival of a once common rite."

Warcop Rushbearing

"An ancient Cinque Port fills with folk music and real ale across 70+ acts in pubs, marquees and open spaces. The 14th year, and the tradition is now its own tradition."

Sandwich Folk & Ale Festival

"Three days at Myerscough College that cover everything from champion Red Poll cattle to grand prix show jumping, Lancashire doing what Lancashire has always done at the showground, thoroughly and with no apology."

Royal Lancashire Show

"Three days at the Kent Showground, Detling: livestock, heritage crafts, Kentish food producers and the particular pride of the Garden of England showing itself off."

Kent County Show

"A spectacular Warwickshire art gallery and its historic parkland host a weekend of chef demos, artisan producers and live music. The grounds normally cost £22 to enter."

Great British Food Festival, Compton Verney

"Cirencester Park for a summer weekend: polo ground turned showground, Cotswold livestock in the ring and artisan food producers in the field, all inside an earl's private estate."

Cotswold Show and Food Festival

"Seven wells dressed in petals and natural materials across the Derbyshire spa town, blessed on a July Sunday, with a funfair on the market place and the Peak District as backdrop."

Buxton Well Dressing

"Choirs and dancers from sixty countries fill a riverside meadow in North Wales for six days. It has been a festival of international peace since 1947, and the sound of it on a Wednesday evening is unlike anything else in the UK."

Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod

"Music, comedy, ideas and long-table dinners in the Warwickshire countryside. A festival for people who want the conversation as much as the line-up."

Also Festival

"A small, beloved folk festival on a Mendip village green a thousand feet up, old sheep fair country, with the bring your own chair intimacy the big festivals lost years ago."

Priddy Folk Festival

"Witcham's village fete has crowned a world pea shooting champion since 1971, and some marksmen now fit laser sights and gyroscopes to their twelve inch tubes."

World Pea Shooting Championship

"A Cornish agricultural show held on a purpose-built showground between Truro and Helston, still run by volunteers, still entirely serious about its livestock, and still the kind of July afternoon that justifies the drive."

Stithians Show

"The 167th Great Yorkshire Show at Harrogate: 35,000 visitors a day, sell-out every year, and the moment when Yorkshire's farming community gathers under its biggest and most unself-conscious sky."

Great Yorkshire Show

"Sixteen days of classical music, jazz and spoken word in the churches, halls and historic spaces of a handsome Sussex market town. Sheku Kanneh-Mason among the 2026 headliners."

Petworth Summer Festival

"A village hall beer festival on the Broads beside the Humpty Dumpty Brewery, reached if you like by the last working chain ferry on the river."

Reedham Beer Festival

"Around two hundred garden snails race outward from a central circle on a damp Norfolk cloth, bred in a county that suits them, to the starter's cry of ready, steady, slow."

World Snail Racing Championships

"Folk and roots music in the grounds of a Jacobean country house. The setting does most of the work; the line-up does the rest."

Folk by the Oak

"Four days at Builth Wells that is the nearest thing Welsh agriculture has to a national parliament, supreme livestock, hundreds of trade stands, and a Friday evening atmosphere that is all its own."

Royal Welsh Show

"Three days of free music on the Kent seafront: shanties, folk songs, workshops, jamming sessions and market stalls rolling across a summer weekend by the North Sea."

Herne Bay Folk Festival

"Kelso Racecourse in late July, where the cattle are Scots and the sheep are Border and the judges have opinions, the great show of the eastern Border country, with the Tweed just over the fence."

Border Union Show

"Running since 1863, still held on the same show field by the sea in North Somerset. A produce show, country fair and community reunion that operates purely on tradition, and is better for it."

Portishead Summer Show

"Self-described as the largest village show in England, held over a Saturday and Sunday in a Lincolnshire fenland village with a working windmill. The firework concert after dark is its own tradition."

Heckington Show

"Three July days at New Park, Brockenhurst: New Forest ponies, cattle from across the south, local food, country sports, and a showground set inside one of England's ancient royal hunting grounds."

New Forest and Hampshire County Show

"West Somerset's biggest country fair, held on the lawns below a National Trust castle for its 45th year. Livestock, falconry, crafts, food and a strong argument for leaving the city behind."

Dunster Country Fair

"The original. Outdoor stages, Cherry Hinton Hall, world-class folk since 1965. The standard everything else is quietly measured against."

Cambridge Folk Festival

"A market town show in the Brecon Beacons foothills that has been bringing Welsh Black cattle and mountain ponies into the ring since the 19th century, surrounded by mountains on every side."

Brecon County Show

"A weekend of street food, chef demos and artisan stalls in the parkland of a Palladian house on the edge of Swindon, part of the series Villagly already lists at Compton Verney."

Great British Food Festival, Lydiard Park

"Children carry rush bearings woven into crosses and harps through Wordsworth's village to St Oswald's church, handed gingerbread at the end by the same shop that has made it for generations."

Grasmere Rushbearing

"A one-day show on the Gower Peninsula, Wales's first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty giving its Sunday to cattle, ponies, goats and a showground that sits quietly between farmland and the sea."

Gower Show

"The 225th running: the Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Society meets in a North York Moors village to weigh berries that have been grown in secret since March, and the champion is measured in drams, not centimetres."

Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Show

"Eight days, 400 events, 20 venues across a Kentish coastal town. Concerts, ceilidhs, a parade and over 160 free events. The kind of week that makes a modest seaside town briefly essential."

Broadstairs Folk Week

"For nine days every August this Wharfedale village fills its gardens, walls and doorways with handmade scarecrows, and half the fun is the treasure hunt of finding them all."

Kettlewell Scarecrow Festival

"Two days at the Mona showground bring the island's farming together, livestock lines, a food hall of Anglesey produce and the particular sea light of the place."

Anglesey Agricultural Show

"One of the last Derbyshire wells dressed entirely in the old way with no nails or glue, just clay boards pressed petal by petal, blessed with a service and kept up for five days."

Barlow Well Dressing

"Food stalls and live music in the grounds of the longest country house facade in Europe, in the estate village of Wentworth."

Great British Food Festival, Wentworth Woodhouse

"A two-day Dorset show on the August hillsides above Blackmore Vale, where the landscape itself is the argument for attending: old breeds in the ring, and Thomas Hardy countryside rolling away on every side."

Gillingham and Shaftesbury Show

"Three days at Withybush Showground where West Wales takes its livestock and its leeks equally seriously, a county show with the Atlantic behind it and a natural tendency towards drama."

Pembrokeshire County Show

"A working farm field below the silhouette of Corfe Castle. Five stages, four days, and the particular quiet of the Dorset hills when the music stops between sets."

Purbeck Valley Folk Festival

"A tower of rushes twelve feet high is pulled through the Pennine villages of Saddleworth by a hundred Morris dancers from across the country, a weekend of dancing, singing, gurning and walking on the edge of the moors."

Saddleworth Rushcart Festival

"The plague village dresses its wells in late August, the same clay and petal craft as its neighbours, in a place that carries more history per cottage than almost anywhere in England."

Eyam Well Dressing

"A peat bog trench in mid-Wales. A wetsuit. A snorkel. Two lengths. No conventional swimming strokes allowed. The world comes to watch."

Bog Snorkelling Championship

"A Wednesday show in late August in a North York Moors village that still takes its horses seriously, hunters, heavy breeds, and a showground in a dale that feels entirely self-sufficient."

Egton Horse and Agricultural Show

"The folk family behind sixty years of Towersey start again on the Claydon Estate, the same dances and singarounds in a new Buckinghamshire field."

Found Festival

"Bank Holiday Saturday in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales: limestone pavements above, Swaledale sheep in the ring below, a show that has run for over a hundred years without ever trying to be anything it is not."

Malham Show

"A border shepherd's show in the shadow of the Cheviots, one of Northumberland's most traditional agricultural gatherings, with Cheviot sheep, cattle, horses and the Border hills right there on the horizon."

Glendale Show

"Bank Holiday Saturday in the limestone heart of the Yorkshire Dales: Wensleydale sheep in the ring, fell races up the hillsides, cheese in the tent, and the dale doing exactly what it does best."

Wensleydale Agricultural Show

"A Surrey and Kent border show that runs across August Bank Holiday weekend with genuine character: horses, cattle, show jumping, and the Weald at its most golden."

Edenbridge and Oxted Agricultural Show

"Bank Holiday Monday in Swaledale: Dales ponies, Swaledale sheep, fell races up the dale sides, and the complete absence of any reason to go anywhere else."

Reeth Show

"A one-day Norfolk agricultural show at the end of August on the market town's own showground, quiet, well-organised and deeply Norfolk, in a county that does agricultural shows as well as anywhere."

Aylsham Show

"Ireland's oldest fair fills a Causeway Coast town for two late August days of horse trading and market stalls, and two things you eat nowhere else, dulse seaweed and the hard toffee called yellowman."

Auld Lammas Fair

"Grown adults in fancy dress grapple for two minutes in a pool of cold Lancashire gravy on August bank holiday, scored as much on showmanship as on pins, all for the local hospice."

World Gravy Wrestling Championships

"Overdale, under Kilnsey Crag: the Upper Wharfedale show on the first day of September, where Dales cattle and sheep are judged with the limestone overhang looming fifty feet above the showfield."

Kilnsey Show

"Hop-picking made this Kentish market town. Every September the harvest reclaims the streets: real ale, folk dancing, a parade, stalls and the smell of hops in the air. Free to attend."

Faversham Hop Festival

"One of the biggest one-day shows in England, held in the Cotswolds on the first Saturday of September, Shetland Pony Grand National, champion cattle, and a showground that fills the whole town with its presence."

Moreton Show

"Two September days on the showground at Dorchester with the county at full stretch: livestock from the Purbeck coast and the vale, local cider, local cheese, and Dorset going about its business with its customary lack of fuss."

Dorset County Show

"A sixteen foot thatched rush cart pulled by sixty men in whites and clogs winds between the pubs of the Calder Valley, morris sides dancing it from inn to inn over a September weekend."

Sowerby Bridge Rushbearing

"Six dancers carry ancient reindeer antlers, some carbon dated to the eleventh century, twelve miles around a Staffordshire village on Wakes Monday, joined by a hobby horse, a Fool and Maid Marian."

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

"The Dartmoor fair of the Uncle Tom Cobley song, still run on the second Tuesday of September with sheep, ponies, bale tossing and a downhill race, in a village that wears its own folk legend lightly."

Widecombe Fair

"Five days of real ale among the steam engines and the great brick viaduct at the East Anglian Railway Museum, the village beer festival that comes with platforms."

Chappel Beer Festival

"Two September days at Crooklands, where Cumbria's livestock and rural skills are given the space they deserve, Herdwick sheep competing in the ring with the Lake District fells as the weather behind them."

Westmorland County Show

"Three days of morris sides, ceilidh and song in a Herefordshire market town surrounded by hop yards and cider orchards."

Bromyard Folk Festival

"Somerset in September: a town that has been judging cheese since 1876, Cheddar at its finest, Caerphilly from the Welsh end of things, and a show ring that still takes its goats as seriously as anything."

Frome Cheese Show

"A South Downs village fair that has been trading sheep since the 12th century, still entirely about the sheep, still held on the village green, and still rather pleased with itself about both."

Findon Sheep Fair

"Horse and tractor ploughing judged furrow by furrow across a Kent stubble field, with a farmers market, gymkhana and the unhurried social weather of a working country day."

Weald of Kent Ploughing Match

"Four days of traditional music on an Hebridean island reachable only by ferry, workshops, open sessions, ceilidhs in the island hall, and the Atlantic on all four sides."

Ceol Cholasa: Colonsay Folk Festival

"Three days in a Black Isle village near Inverness where the sessions run late and the Moray Firth catches the September light outside, a small Highland folk festival doing exactly what it promised."

Ardersier Folk Festival

"Crabs (crab apples, thrown from a cart) in the morning, greasy pole and hound trailing through the day, and in the evening competitors push their faces through a horse collar to achieve the most grotesque expression possible, since 1267."

Egremont Crab Fair and World Gurning Championships

"Two September days at the Berkshire county showground: livestock, rural crafts, local food and a show ring that has been drawing the county together for well over a century."

Newbury Show

"A one-day North Yorkshire show in September that has been the anchor of the Stokesley social calendar since 1859, prize Cleveland Bays, heavy horses, North York Moors ponies, and a town that turns out completely."

Stokesley Show

"The food festival that started the whole British movement, filling a Monmouthshire market town under the Sugar Loaf with Welsh lamb, farmhouse cheese and orchard cider every September."

Abergavenny Food Festival

"Bewerley Park on the third Sunday of September: the valley gathers itself for one more great day before autumn sets in, with Dales ponies, produce and the particular amber light of Nidderdale in September."

Nidderdale Show

"The last show of the English season, held in the Coquet Valley in mid-October with the Cheviots above and Northumberland all around, Border sheep, sheepdog trials and views that make the drive entirely worth it."

Alwinton Border Shepherds' Show

"The self styled Rural Capital of Food throws its October festival around the pork pie and the Stilton, with one of the largest gatherings of artisan cheesemakers in the country."

Melton Mowbray Food Festival

"A Northamptonshire village green, hundreds of competitors in silly hats, one conker on a string. The 61st running of the most earnest competition you will ever attend in a field."

World Conker Championships

"Townsfolk hoist barrels soaked in tar and set alight onto their shoulders and run them flaming through packed Devon streets on bonfire night, a roaring, slightly terrifying inheritance passed down through local families."

Ottery St Mary Tar Barrels

"The prettiest village in Wiltshire opens its village hall for a handful of December market days, the kind of small, candlelit affair the postcard villages do best."

Castle Combe Christmas Market

"At midnight on New Year's Eve forty odd guisers carry blazing barrels on their heads to a bonfire in the Northumberland market square, then turn to first foot the year in."

Allendale Tar Bar'l

"A man encased head to toe in sticky burrs walks the town for nine hours, a fertility custom of unknown but ancient origin."

Burryman's Parade

"At Hogmanay locals swing flaming wire cages of fire over their heads down the High Street to burn away the old year."

Stonehaven Fireball Ceremony

"A burning barrel of tar is carried around this Moray fishing village to mark the old new year, a Pictish-era survival."

Burning of the Clavie

"The most famous of the Highland games, with tossing the caber, hill races and massed pipe bands, often attended by royalty."

Braemar Gathering

"The March of the Lonach Highlanders, kilted men with pikes walking the glen, precedes a day of games at Strathdon."

Lonach Highland Gathering

"Heavy events, highland dancing and pipe bands on Aboyne Green in a long-running Deeside gathering."

Aboyne Highland Games

"Classic Deeside games of caber, hammer and dancing in a village beside Balmoral."

Ballater Highland Games

"The largest Highland games in the world, closing with a torchlit march of massed pipe bands through Dunoon."

Cowal Highland Gathering

"Hundreds of Uppies and Doonies wrestle a leather ball through the streets of Kirkwall on Christmas Day and New Year's Day."

Kirkwall Ba' Game

"Local children race round the parish church swinging paper balls on string to chase away winter."

Whuppity Scoorie

"Children in elaborate horse costumes parade, then boys plough miniature furrows in the sand at the Hope."

Boys' Ploughing Match and Festival of the Horse

"Competitors snorkel two lengths of a peat bog trench without conventional swimming strokes, in Britain's smallest town."

World Bog Snorkelling Championships

"Runners race horse-and-rider over 22 miles of Welsh hill country, a wager born in a pub argument."

Man versus Horse Marathon

"A celebration of Welsh wool and natural fibres, with hundreds of stalls of fleece, yarn and craft."

Wonderwool Wales

"A Welsh-language music festival filling the squares of this stone-built Snowdonia town."

Sesiwn Fawr Dolgellau

"Ireland's oldest traditional fair, famous for dulse seaweed and yellowman toffee, drawing thousands to the Antrim coast."

Ould Lammas Fair

"A horse fair and street festival dating to a 17th century charter, the last surviving May fair in Ireland."

Ballyclare May Fair

"A week of traditional music and song under the Mourne Mountains by Carlingford Lough."

Fiddler's Green International Festival

"A celebration of the prized Comber Earlies potato, with a food village in this County Down market town."

Comber Earlies Food Festival

"A traditional one-day agricultural show in the Mourne foothills with livestock, horses and home industries."

Castlewellan Show

"After a hare pie is scrambled, two villages battle to carry small barrels across streams in a no-rules contest."

Hallaton Bottle Kicking and Hare Pie Scramble

"Black-faced clog dancers with wooden discs dance the length of this Pennine town every Easter Saturday."

Britannia Coco-nut Dancers

"A King clad entirely in flowers rides through the Peak District village before his garland is hoisted up the church tower."

Castleton Garland Day

"Couples in top hats and gowns dance the Furry Dance in and out of houses to welcome spring to this Cornish town."

Helston Flora Day

"A boat-shaped horse decked in ribbons tours the town and harbour from May eve, accompanied by drums."

Minehead Hobby Horse

"A masked hobby horse and grenadiers hunt a costumed Earl through the village before casting him into the sea."

Hunting of the Earl of Rone

"Villagers claim ancient rights to gather wood, then process to Salisbury Cathedral to shout Grovely."

Grovely and Oak Apple Day

"Up'ards and Down'ards play a two-day game of football across three miles of town and river, goals set at old mills."

Ashbourne Royal Shrovetide Football

"A huge leather ball is fought over along Long Street for two hours, a Shrove Tuesday game dating to 1199."

Atherstone Ball Game

"Women in aprons and headscarves race from the market place to the church flipping pancakes, run since 1445."

Olney Pancake Race

"Five wells are dressed with intricate pictures pressed in clay from flower petals, the best known of the Peak custom."

Tissington Well Dressing

"Parishioners join hands to embrace their church among the famous 99 yews of this Cotswold wool village."

Painswick Clypping Ceremony

"An effigy is carried through the Wensleydale village to a rhyme before being burned, origins long lost."

Burning of Old Bartle

"Competitors race uphill carrying a hundredweight sack of coal to the village maypole every Easter Monday."

World Coal Carrying Championships

"Marksmen fire dried peas at a putty target twelve feet away in a Fenland village contest run since 1971."

World Pea Shooting Championships

"Runners carry heavy woolsacks up and down the one-in-four Gumstool Hill, recalling the Cotswold wool trade."

Tetbury Woolsack Races

"A traditional one-day show on the edge of Dartmoor with livestock, horticulture and terrier racing."

Chagford Show

"Rare breed sheep fill the market square with sheep racing, shearing and Wensleydale crafts."

Masham Sheep Fair

"A charter sheep fair held every October since 1238 in this south Lincolnshire village."

Corby Glen Sheep Fair

"A charter fair famous in Devon song, filling the stannary town's streets with stalls and rides each October."

Tavistock Goosey Fair

"A medieval-rooted fair with onion-eating contests and the heaviest onion competition in a Forest of Dean town."

Newent Onion Fayre

"The Vale of Evesham marks its asparagus season with an auction at the Fleece Inn and the Gus the asparagus man parade."

British Asparagus Festival

"One of the original independent food festivals, set in the castle of this celebrated Marches food town."

Ludlow Food Festival

"Suffolk producers gather at Snape Maltings by the river for two days of tastings and demonstrations."

Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival

"Teams roll wooden cheeses down the old Great North Road in the village that gave the cheese its name."

Stilton Cheese Rolling

"A week of folk music, dance and song fills this Regency seaside town and its clifftop arena."

Sidmouth Folk Festival

"Fairport Convention host a vast folk-rock reunion in a field beside this Oxfordshire canal village each August."

Fairport's Cropredy Convention

"The classical festival founded by Benjamin Britten, centred on the concert hall at Snape Maltings."

Aldeburgh Festival

"A Lune valley village fills its lanes with themed scarecrows for two weeks, ending in a fair on the green."

Wray Scarecrow Festival

"A street fair dating to a 13th century charter, once a pony fair, now stalls and rides through the Devon town."

Bampton Charter Fair

"The congregation joins hands around the church in an embracing ceremony in this Peak lead-mining town."

Wirksworth Clypping

"Children dress and dance around an ancient hawthorn said to descend from the Glastonbury Thorn."

Bawming the Thorn

"Flour is distributed to villagers on Lady Day under a medieval bequest said to carry a curse if ever stopped."

Tichborne Dole

"Tutti-men carrying flower-topped poles call on every common-right house to collect a kiss and a coin."

Hungerford Hocktide and Tutti Day

"Heavy events, dancing and a hill race above the town, closing with massed pipe bands in Highland Perthshire."

Pitlochry Highland Games

"A week of riding the marches, crowning of the Beltane Queen and pageantry in this Tweed valley town."

Peebles Beltane Festival

"Mounted ride-outs led by the Kelso Laddie criss-cross the Borders countryside in a week of civic ceremony."

Kelso Civic Week

"One of the highest village games in Scotland, with heavy events and dancing in the Cairngorms."

Tomintoul Highland Games

"Wales's oldest classical music festival, held in the timbered hall and gardens of Gregynog near Newtown."

Gregynog Festival

"Shin-kicking, tug of war and a torchlit procession on Dover's Hill, games first held in 1612."

Robert Dover's Cotswold Olimpicks

"A small leather ball is passed through a bull ring and fought across the village in a game over 1000 years old."

Sedgefield Shrove Tuesday Ball Game

"Two parishes play football across pasture below the castle, the ball piped to the field and won by carrying it home."

Alnwick Shrovetide Football

"A long-running west Dorset agricultural show on the coast near Bridport with livestock and food halls."

Melplash Show

"A one-day Hampshire show by the Test valley with livestock, heavy horses and a grand parade."

Romsey Show

"Petal pictures dress the wells beside the great Peak District church known as the Cathedral of the Peak."

Tideswell Well Dressing

"One of the largest Hogmanay bonfires in Scotland, lit in the heart of this Borders town every New Year's Eve."

Biggar Bonfire

"Hundreds of riders follow the standard bearer round the burgh boundaries in the oldest of the Borders common ridings."

Selkirk Common Riding

"Cornet and mounted supporters ride the marches to drum and fife, commemorating a 1514 skirmish."

Hawick Common Riding

"A day of riding the marches, fair-crying and emblems of thistle and heather in this Dumfriesshire town."

Langholm Common Riding

"A vast rolling rugby scrum, the sway, pushes a leather hood to one of four pubs, a custom said to be 700 years old."

Haxey Hood

"Competitors lob black puddings underarm at a stack of Yorkshire puddings on a plinth, settling an old rivalry."

World Black Pudding Throwing Championships

"Caber and hammer beside Loch Fyne in the grounds of Inveraray Castle, seat of the Duke of Argyll."

Inveraray Highland Games

"Anglesey producers gather in the shadow of the medieval castle on the Menai Strait."

Beaumaris Food Festival

"Music, talks and art in the mid-Wales town that was once Owain Glyndwr's seat of parliament."

Machynlleth Festival

"Coracle racing on the Teifi and a quayside food market in this old Ceredigion port town."

Cardigan River and Food Festival

"A week of galas, the famous Galway hooker boat races and street fun where Strangford Lough meets the sea."

Portaferry Gala