Seaton Tar Barrels

"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

"The night before Christmas Eve, this impossibly pretty Cornish fishing village marks the legend of a man who braved winter storms alone to bring in a catch that saved the whole village from starvation, with lantern processions down harbour lanes and a vast stargazy pie whose fish heads gaze out through the pastry crust."

Tom Bawcock's Eve

"Mummers shrouded head to toe in newspaper strips are led by the Town Crier to perform an ancient sword-fight and resurrection play around the village."

Marshfield Paper Boys Mummers Play

"By bonfire light a crowd toasts the oldest apple tree, fires guns to scare off evil spirits and pours cider over its roots at the Butchers Arms."

Carhampton Wassail

"On the feast of St Ia, the mayor of St Ives throws a silver ball from the church wall to a waiting crowd of children who then hurl it between themselves on the beach and through the town for the morning, the last survivor of a Cornish hurling tradition that once swept across the county and is now played annually in only two places."

St Ives Hurling of the Silver Ball

"Shrove Tuesday sees the entire village of St Columb Major divide into Townsmen and Countrymen for a traditional hurling match through the streets and out across the surrounding fields, played with a solid silver ball and no rules beyond the agreement that the ball must be carried across one of two sets of goals two miles apart."

St Columb Major Hurling the Silver Ball

"Dozens of competitors hurl themselves down a near-vertical Cotswold hillside chasing a 7lb Double Gloucester cheese, a tradition that has drawn crowds to Brockworth every Spring Bank Holiday for centuries."

Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling and Wake