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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"One of the last Derbyshire wells dressed entirely in the old way with no nails or glue, just clay boards pressed petal by petal, blessed with a service and kept up for five days."
Barlow Well Dressing
"An annual one-day agricultural show in the southern Peak District gateway town of Ashbourne, celebrating local livestock, rural skills and Derbyshire farming heritage."
Ashbourne Show
"A full week of Derbyshire village carnival life with well dressings, a flower festival, a scarecrow competition and then the spectacular Saturday parade of floats, fancy dress and Carnival Royalty through the village, followed by classic cars, alpacas and children's entertainment on the recreation ground."
Barlow Carnival
"The plague village dresses its wells in late August, the same clay and petal craft as its neighbours, in a place that carries more history per cottage than almost anywhere in England."
Eyam Well Dressing
"One of the highest-altitude well dressings in Derbyshire, Taddington's boards are dressed and displayed in a windswept limestone plateau village above the Wye Valley."
Taddington Well Dressing
"One of Derbyshire's most tranquil well dressings appears in this small hamlet near Miller's Dale each August, where the petal-and-clay panel stands in one of the quietest and most beautiful corners of the White Peak."
Wormhill Well Dressing
"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"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"A three-day seaside spectacle in the tiny village of Seaview complete with a greasy pole over the sea, tug of war, swimming races, diving and a fireworks display over the Solent."
Seaview Village Regatta
✦ Weird and Wonderful