"For one July weekend the narrow-gauge railway threading the Mid Wales hills runs its original 1902 locomotive on a mixed train of replica Pickering carriages and goods wagons, alongside Austrian balcony carriages acquired from the Alps in the early days of preservation, recreating scenes from two entirely different railway traditions on the same track."
Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway Vintage Weekend
"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
"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
"The Montgomeryshire hill farming community gathers in a small Powys market town for one of Mid Wales's most compact and friendly one-day agricultural shows."
Llanfyllin Show
"Three days of the finest Welsh dogs working sheep across a hill field near Brecon, with ice cream from Llanfaes Dairy and a real trial hush over the crowd."
Welsh National Sheepdog Trials
"The market town at the heart of the Elan Valley turns its cattle market into a gathering of vintage tractors, steam engines and working machinery each August, a show that could only happen in a part of Wales where the landscape itself feels preserved from an earlier century."
Rhayader District Vintage Show
"A leisurely ride through mid-Wales hills where every checkpoint hands you cider and perry, capped by a BBQ and free live music in town."
Summer Cider Cycle
✦ Weird & Wonderful"Teams of two mountain bikers tow a charioteer in a Roman-style chariot in a flat-out dash for the world title."
World Mountain Bike Chariot Racing Championship
✦ Weird & Wonderful"A 25,000-capacity festival on a Brecon Beacons estate where ten areas wrap live music around literature, science, comedy and a giant burning Green Man."
Green Man
"The Victorian spa town of Llandrindod Wells dresses entirely in period costume for a week each August, with residents, traders and visitors all adopting Victorian dress for street entertainment, performances, markets and a grand parade through a town whose architecture still looks exactly as it did when the railway brought Victorian society to drink the waters."
Llandrindod Wells Victorian Festival
"Music, talks and art in the mid-Wales town that was once Owain Glyndwr's seat of parliament."
Machynlleth Festival
"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
Villagly Award · Soggiest in the UK ✦ Weird & Wonderful"A tiny border town becomes a hotbed of brand new classical music, championing living composers and women composers in churches and halls scattered through the Welsh Marches."
Presteigne Festival
"A classic Montgomeryshire village show in one of Wales's prettiest black-and-white villages, with livestock competitions, produce displays, craft stalls, children's entertainment and live music filling the showground every August Bank Holiday."
Berriew Show
"A mini triathlon that swaps clean water for a peat bog, sending you swimming, cycling and running through mud, ditches and hills."
Chapel Bogathlon
✦ Weird & Wonderful"Artisan stalls line Bronllys Road and the Great Barns fill with live bands before the whole town gathers to cheer the famous duck race down the River Ennig."
Talgarth Festival of the Black Mountains
"Competitors snorkel two lengths of a peat bog trench without conventional swimming strokes, in Britain's smallest town."
World Bog Snorkelling Championships
✦ Weird & Wonderful"A proper village show on the banks of the River Usk inside the Brecon Beacons, celebrating local farming, food and craft."
Llangynidr Show
"The 12th annual festival fills Newtown's Town Hall Grounds with over 60 local and international food producers, chef demonstrations, live music across genres and a dedicated children's village in the heart of Mid Wales."
Newtown Food Festival
"A classic Welsh mountain show high on the Brecon Beacons, where Welsh Mountain sheep and Black Cattle compete in a village famous for its autumn sheep mart with the Black Mountains visible in every direction."
Sennybridge Show
"Four days of self-guided walks through some of Britain's finest scenery, ending with a Blister Ball of live music and dancing."
Mid-Wales 4 Day Walking Festival
"A free three-day town-wide immersion in wartime Britain with a real Spitfire, tanks, military vehicles, re-enactors in period dress, swing bands, a blitz ball and the Longest Yarn exhibition bringing the whole of Welshpool back to the 1940s."
Welshpool 1940s Weekend
"A brutal 50km ultra up the 25 percent Devil's Staircase that rewards finishers with a devil medal and a bowl of Welsh cawl."
Trailhead Get Jerky Devil's Staircase Ultra Trail Race
✦ Weird & Wonderful"Violinist Rachel Podger leads world-class period-instrument music in the intimate churches and halls of a small market town wrapped in the Brecon Beacons."
Brecon Baroque Festival
"A challenging, mostly off-road half marathon through mountainous scenery run in memory of a much-loved local runner."
Ron Skilton Memorial Half Marathon and 12k
"A ten-day celebration of real ale centred on the Neuadd Arms Hotel in Britain's smallest town, anchored by the Real Ale Wobble cycle ride and the Real Ale Ramble walking event across the Mid Wales hills."
Mid Wales Beer Festival
"A waymarked mountain bike ride where beer tokens buy you locally brewed real ale at the finish, followed by a beer while your bike gets washed."
Real Ale Wobble
✦ Weird & Wonderful"A walk through unspoilt countryside with the organisers' own free beer stops at each checkpoint, run alongside the town's 10-day beer festival."
Real Ale Ramble
✦ Weird & Wonderful"One of Europe's finest prime stock shows over two winter days at the Royal Welsh Showground, where Welsh farmers bring their best cattle, sheep and pigs before Christmas and thousands of visitors shop for exceptional Welsh food, crafts and countryside products."
Royal Welsh Winter Fair
"The town of a thousand bookshops turns its streets into a winter market each December, where hand-crafted gift stalls sit alongside the antiquarian bookshops that have made this Welsh Borders town a destination known the world over."
Hay-on-Wye Christmas Market
"A torchlit New Year's Eve procession follows a decorated horse's skull on a pole around town, trading sung Welsh challenges for entry and refreshment."
Mari Lwyd Walk
✦ Weird & Wonderful"A fresh-air community ramble through the Cambrian hills to blow away the cobwebs on the first morning of the year."
New Years Day Walk
"Each January, Wales's smallest town dresses in togas to race mountain bike chariots around Abernant Lake and toast the Roman winter god Saturn with Welsh real ales at the Neuadd Arms."
Saturnalia Beer Festival
"A celebration of Welsh wool and natural fibres, with hundreds of stalls of fleece, yarn and craft."
Wonderwool Wales
"Founded in 1988 in a Welsh border booktown, this eleven-day festival draws over 150,000 visitors to hear writers, scientists, comedians and policymakers debate ideas across more than 600 events on the edge of the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park."
Hay Festival
"Runners race horse-and-rider over 22 miles of Welsh hill country, a wager born in a pub argument."
Man versus Horse Marathon
"Wales's oldest classical music festival, held in the timbered hall and gardens of Gregynog near Newtown."
Gregynog Festival
"You retrace the old cattle drovers' mountain trails to a long-lost Drovers' inn that is reopened for one day to pour locally brewed ale."
Drovers Walks
✦ Weird & Wonderful