Comrie Flambeaux
At the stroke of midnight villagers light ten-foot tarred birch torches and parade them behind a pipe band before hurling the flames into the River Earn.
A well-kept conservation village on the Highland Boundary Fault, punching above its size with a genuine Mackintosh building in the main street, strong community character, and enough cafes, pubs and walking trails to fill a half-day comfortably.
Cottages, B&Bs and hotels near Comrie, Perth and Kinross.
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"Wades Park at Aberfeldy hosts its games beside the same River Tay that Robert Burns immortalised in verse, where the Birks of Aberfeldy rise behind the field and the games serve as the climax of the town's summer show weekend in the heart of highland Perthshire."
Aberfeldy Highland Games
"Market Park in the town that was once the largest cattle market in Scotland and the southern end of the drove roads from the Highlands hosts its gathering each August, where the Knock hill rises above the ground and the games feel rooted in a landscape that shaped the character of the entire Highland cattle trade."
Crieff Highland Gathering
"Scotland's premier sheepdog competition over four days at Letham Farm in the Ochil Hills, where the nation's finest handlers qualify for the International and the once-every-three-years World Trial."
Scottish National Sheepdog Trials
"A secluded Perthshire glen games in the hills above Blairgowrie, where the heavy events take place on a field ringed by heather moorland and the highland dancing stage backs onto birch woodland."
Strathardle Highland Games
"Amid Shakespeare's Birnam Wood you can watch the gloriously daft World Haggis Eating Competition alongside the caber and the Mad Kiltie Dash."
Birnam Highland Games
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Games in the heart of Perthshire soft fruit country the weekend after Braemar, when the season's competitors make one of their final gatherings of the year on Bogles Field."
Blairgowrie Highland Games
"On Easdale Island, accessible only by foot ferry, competitors skim slates across a flooded quarry pool on the last Saturday of summer, in the world's only skimming championship held on a Scottish island with no cars and a population of around 60."
World Stone Skimming Championships
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Up to a thousand torch-bearing guizers in Viking dress march through the dark and set a full-size longship galley ablaze."
Up Helly Aa
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Twice a year the entire town of Jedburgh divides into Uppies and Doonies to contest a football match with no fixed rules, no referee and no pitch boundaries through the streets and closes of the town, a tradition said to derive from the use of an English soldier's head after a medieval border battle."
Jedburgh Ba' Game
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Named for the spectral black dog that terrorised St Mary's Church in 1577, this brilliant folklore festival fills the town with art, parade, storytelling and a ritual burning of demons."
Black Shuck Festival
✦ Weird and Wonderful"At the Barley Mow pub in Bonsall village, hens race over a thirty-foot course in heats building to a grand final, watched by enthusiastic crowds who take this Derbyshire Peak District tradition with exactly the gravity it deserves."
Bonsall World Championship Hen Racing
✦ Weird and Wonderful"The village of Heather, Kings Award winner, goes cheerfully insane each August as gardens fill with hundreds of scarecrows depicting celebrities and topical characters, all competing for votes from the crowds who walk the trail with a guide booklet."
Heather Scarecrow Festival
✦ Weird and Wonderful