Hay-on-Wye Christmas Market
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 earns a full day without effort: a 700-year Thursday market, a Michelin Green Star restaurant, a freshly restored medieval castle, and more bookshops per head than anywhere on earth make it one of the most genuinely characterful small towns in Wales.
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"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 and 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 and 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
"The magnificent Victorian Market Hall of this Welsh market town at the foot of the Brecon Beacons hosts its Christmas markets on late Sundays in November and December, offering local crafts and food in one of the grandest working market buildings in Wales."
Abergavenny Christmas Market
"Seventy stalls of crafts and local produce take over the scenic centre of this canal-and-cross Cheshire village beside Lymm Cross."
Lymm Makers Market
"Forty local makers and artisan producers fill the medieval village hall and its glebe field in one of Suffolk's most photographed timber-framed villages, with street food trucks and barista coffee outside."
Lavenham Summer Craft and Foodie Festival
"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