Holmfirth Festival of Folk
A not-for-profit community festival now in its fifth decade, it fills almost every pub, hall and cobbled street in Holmfirth with concerts, singarounds, ceilidhs, morris dancing and family workshops across a single weekend each May.
A handsome Pennine mill town that punches above its size: good real ale at a CAMRA stalwart, a proper street market, strong cafe culture, and the Last of the Summer Wine backdrop giving it a gentle fame that draws visitors without overwhelming the place.
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"A full Wharfedale country show with livestock, horticultural classes, showjumping and local food, run by the Arthington, Bramhope, Pool and District Society since 1906 at the gateway to the Dales."
Arthington Show
"The Calder Valley town of Mirfield holds its annual show at the Huddersfield Road showground each late August, a West Yorkshire agricultural and horticultural show that has been running continuously for well over a century in a part of the county where the textile mill towns and the farming country meet."
Mirfield Show
"Every first September weekend, the hilltop village of Norland transforms via a self-guided trail through narrow lanes and gardens, with villagers creating hundreds of characters on this year's Sports, Leisure and Games theme, all raising money for local causes."
Norland Scarecrow Festival
✦ Weird and Wonderful"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
✦ Weird and Wonderful"A 35 year old festival that scatters concerts and slow sessions for beginners between a parish church, the common and snug pub back rooms in a Wharfedale market town."
Otley Folk Festival
"Competitors race uphill carrying a hundredweight sack of coal to the village maypole every Easter Monday."
World Coal Carrying Championships
✦ Weird and Wonderful"A screen-free family festival of wild freedom and glittering wonder where woodland glades, campfires and circus turn a Cheshire estate into a storybook."
Just So Festival
"One of England's most singular calendar customs, this centuries-old West Witton rite sees a chanting crowd carry a glowing-eyed effigy of 'Bartle' through the village at nightfall before stabbing and burning him on the hillside above Wensleydale."
Burning Bartle
"An effigy is carried through the Wensleydale village to a rhyme before being burned, origins long lost."
Burning of Old Bartle
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Over a hundred concerts plus rapper, clog and Morris teams spill through a clifftop fishing town for a full week of song, dance, shanties and storytelling."
Whitby Folk Week
"A historic East Yorkshire village spreads concerts across its Civic Hall, parish church and local pubs over the Bank Holiday weekend."
Cottingham Folk Festival
"England's only festival of medieval music fills fourteenth century Bolton Castle and its church with lute, oud and bagpipe as performers explore the forgotten margins of the medieval world."
Medieval Music in the Dales