World Toe Wrestling Championship
In its 52nd year, the world's only toe wrestling championship returns to Ashbourne Market Place where barefoot competitors lock toes and try to pin each other's foot to the ground in a sport invented in 1974 and officially rejected by the International Olympic Committee.
A handsome, well-stocked Georgian market town on the Peak District doorstep, with genuine independent character, a CAMRA-recognised beer scene, a Michelin-listed hotel, and enough cafes, pubs and a weekly market to fill a day without any effort.
Cottages, B&Bs and hotels near Ashbourne, Derbyshire.
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"Three wells dressed with intricate flower-and-clay panels anchor a full week of events in this limestone gorge village each late July, including a fell race, model boat race, treasure hunt and brass band on the village green."
Stoney Middleton Well Dressing
"On the last Saturday of the month the Agricultural Business Centre fills with Peak District producers, in the town that gave its name to the pudding."
Bakewell Farmers' Market
"At the Barley Mow pub in Bonsall village, hens race over a thirty-foot course in heats building to a grand final, watched by enthusiastic crowds who take this Derbyshire Peak District tradition with exactly the gravity it deserves."
Bonsall World Championship Hen Racing
✦ Weird and Wonderful"A well-loved Peak District village custom in the heart of the Hope Valley, where Bradwell's community gathers each August to display and bless its hand-crafted petal mosaics."
Bradwell Well Dressing
"Derbyshire's premier steam and heritage show on a hillside farm in the Peak District fringes, with a working plant area, military living history groups, a wall of death and over 300 years of machinery on display in a single field."
Cromford Steam Rally
"First Saturday of the month on the Memorial Gardens, with local produce, music and the steep stone streets of a former lead mining town climbing away on every side."
Wirksworth Farmers' Market
"The village of Heather, Kings Award winner, goes cheerfully insane each August as gardens fill with hundreds of scarecrows depicting celebrities and topical characters, all competing for votes from the crowds who walk the trail with a guide booklet."
Heather Scarecrow Festival
✦ Weird and Wonderful"At midnight on Boxing Day, a mob of villagers paraders through Broughton in Northamptonshire banging tin cans, dustbin lids and any other available metal objects to drive away a witch who is said to have terrorised the village centuries ago, a custom so relentlessly noisy and purposeful that nothing else quite like it survives in England."
Broughton Tin Can Band
✦ Weird and Wonderful"A 700-year-old Lincolnshire custom where a leather tube is wrestled by hundreds of villagers toward one of four pubs, preceded by a Fool being smoked over a fire and the Lord of the Hood making proclamations in the church."
Haxey Hood Game
✦ Weird and Wonderful"On a June weekend, Bromyard's market town fills with scarecrows on a Heroes or Villains theme, culminating in a Friday evening grand parade where schools, scouts and families wheel their creations through the streets to the town green for judging."
Bromyard Scarecrow Festival
✦ Weird and Wonderful"A Lincolnshire village vintage show with over 250 classic vehicles, a Lancaster Bomber flypast and the 19th World Egg Throwing Championships, where international teams hurl eggs for distance, accuracy and sheer spectacular mess."
Swaton Vintage Day and World Egg Throwing Championships
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Named for the spectral black dog that terrorised St Mary's Church in 1577, this brilliant folklore festival fills the town with art, parade, storytelling and a ritual burning of demons."
Black Shuck Festival
✦ Weird and Wonderful