Ottery St Mary Tar Barrels
Townsfolk hoist barrels soaked in tar and set alight onto their shoulders and run them flaming through packed Devon streets on bonfire night, a roaring, slightly terrifying inheritance passed down through local families.
A genuinely characterful East Devon market town with real pubs, a farmers market, a working bakery, and one of the finest medieval parish churches in the county - animated further by the famous November tar barrel run and a civic community that is actively keeping its high street alive.
Cottages, B&Bs and hotels near Ottery St Mary, Devon.
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"A traditional one-day show on the edge of Dartmoor with livestock, horticulture and terrier racing."
Chagford Show
"The Levellers' fiercely independent family festival runs six stages with no sponsorship, a Magic Teapot, folk sessions and a different fancy-dress theme every Sunday."
Beautiful Days
"A fair running since 1888 in honour of a farmer who baked an enormous apple pie from his windfall apples, still serving apple pie and cream alongside falconry and a novelty dog show."
Marldon Apple Pie Fair
"The Dartmoor fair of the Uncle Tom Cobley song, still run on the second Tuesday of September with sheep, ponies, bale tossing and a downhill race, in a village that wears its own folk legend lightly."
Widecombe Fair
"Young world-class singers and players perform vocal and chamber music in the ancient parish churches of the Dartmoor villages around Chagford, with free entry for the under-25s."
Whiddon Autumn Festival
"Devon's county ploughing championship brings competitors to Mid Devon farmland each autumn, where red soil and deep Devon banks create the conditions for what ploughmen here consider among the most technically demanding ploughing ground in England."
Devon County Ploughing Championship
"Traction engines, vintage vehicles and working machinery gather off the A436 near Bourton-on-the-Water for a two-day show in the Cotswold limestone uplands, the kind of event that draws real working-machinery enthusiasts rather than festival-goers and is better for it."
North Cotswold Steam and Vintage Show
"Parishioners join hands to embrace their church among the famous 99 yews of this Cotswold wool village."
Painswick Clypping Ceremony
"The farm shop team lay out apples gathered from local orchards for sampling against the backdrop of one of England's grandest landscape gardens."
Apple Day at Stourhead
"Set in a hidden Cotswold valley, this 18th-century rococo garden opens each January for its annual snowdrop season, showcasing over five million blooms across fifteen named varieties including the locally discovered Galanthus 'Atkinsii'."
Snowdrops Spectacle at Painswick Rococo Garden
"Six million snowdrops in over 40 varieties carpet the Victorian Fernery, Lime Avenue, and Lady's Walk of this National Trust estate, with volunteer-led early morning walks before the gates open to the public."
Kingston Lacy Snowdrop Season
"A family snowdrop collection rooted in Henry John Elwes's 1874 discovery of Galanthus elwesii in Turkey has grown to over 350 varieties across ten lakeside and woodland acres in the Cotswold Churn valley."
Colesbourne Park Snowdrop Season