Hertfordshire Ploughing Match
The Hertfordshire Agricultural Competitions Association's annual ploughing match takes competitors to the chalk downland north of Royston each autumn, farming country that has been intensively worked for centuries but where the ploughing match keeps the older skills in regular use.
A handsomely preserved coaching-road village whose Grade I flint church, rare wagon wash, thatched streetscape, and an honest real-ale pub reward a deliberate stop, but there is not quite enough to detain a visitor for a full day.
Cottages, B&Bs and hotels near Barkway, Hertfordshire.
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"Pun-loving villagers craft dozens of scarecrows like Builder's Bum and The Crow Bar along a trail that funds the future-proofing of St Leonard's church."
Flamstead Scarecrow Festival
"On the first of October in this small Hertfordshire village, the leaves from Church Lane are swept onto the road so that an elderly man from the parish can roll down the lane and the children can shout after him, a custom so old and so eccentric that even the villagers are not entirely sure what it commemorates."
Braughing Old Man's Day
✦ Weird and Wonderful"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
"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
"A boutique one-day festival that turns a Hertfordshire village green, church and memorial hall into stages, hailed by the BBC Radio 2 Folk Show as one of the best little festivals in the country."
Kimpton Folk Festival
"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
"Ampton Hall estate near Bury St Edmunds hosts a ploughing competition in the chalky boulder clay of West Suffolk each autumn, a county match that draws skilled ploughmen from across East Anglia to fields that have been arable since the Domesday Book."
Ampton Hall Ploughing Match
"Teams roll wooden cheeses down the old Great North Road in the village that gave the cheese its name."
Stilton Cheese Rolling
✦ Weird and Wonderful"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
Villagly Award · Slowest Race in the UK ✦ Weird and Wonderful"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
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Caber-tossing and Highland dancing come to the Alice Littler Memorial Park in the heart of Speyside whisky country."
Aberlour Strathspey Highland Games
"One of Ireland's oldest rural sports comes to the country roads of County Armagh, where competitors hurl a heavy iron bowl along miles of tarmac in the fewest throws, drawing huge roadside crowds in a tradition stretching back centuries."
Irish Road Bowling All Ireland Series