"A beribboned horse's skull on a pole arrives at the ancient Old House inn to challenge drinkers to a sung Welsh rhyming duel before being let in."
Llangynwyd Mari Lwyd
✦ Weird and Wonderful"A fresh-air community ramble through the Cambrian hills to blow away the cobwebs on the first morning of the year."
New Years Day Walk
"A vast rolling rugby scrum, the sway, pushes a leather hood to one of four pubs, a custom said to be 700 years old."
Haxey Hood
✦ 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"Shetland's oldest fire festival opens the islands' Viking season each January with 200 to 300 torch-bearing guizers escorting a burning longship galley through the streets of Shetland's former capital to the harbour at Port Arthur."
Scalloway Fire Festival
"Sustainable Clevedon brings the community together each January at the town's Community Orchard to bang pots, sing to the apple trees, and share mulled cider in a centuries-old wassailing ceremony."
Clevedon Wassail
"Each January, Wales's smallest town dresses in togas to race mountain bike chariots around Abernant Lake and toast the Roman winter god Saturn with Welsh real ales at the Neuadd Arms."
Saturnalia Beer Festival
"Lantern-lit crowds gather around the community orchard for an apple-blessing ceremony with Morris dancing, folk song and mulled scrumpy on a cold January night."
Stoke Gabriel Wassail
✦ Weird and Wonderful"A burning barrel of tar is carried around this Moray fishing village to mark the old new year, a Pictish-era survival."
Burning of the Clavie
"A man hidden under five stone of twisted straw dances through a Fenland town leading molly and clog sides, before the bear is ceremonially burned the next day."
Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Hosted by Widders Border Morris on the ancient border between England and Wales, this January gathering weaves together West Country apple wassailing, the Welsh Mari Lwyd hobby-horse tradition, Morris dancing, mumming, and a ceilidh into a single boisterous riverside procession through Chepstow town centre."
Chepstow Wassail and Mari Lwyd
"One of England's oldest longsword teams parades from the Reading Room and dances across the moorland village in pink and blue Crimean-striped tunics."
Goathland Plough Stots Day of Dance
✦ Weird and Wonderful"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
"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
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Torch-bearing villagers process from orchard to orchard with pots and pans to wake the apple trees, ending with refreshments at the cricket club."
Whimple Wassail
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Birthplace of the Scottish Snowdrop Festival, Cambo Estate holds the Plant Heritage national collection of over 200 specialist snowdrop varieties carpeting 70 acres of woodland walks down to the Fife coast."
Cambo Estate Snowdrop Festival
"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
"Millions of snowdrops naturalised over centuries carpet 18 acres of medieval abbey grounds in Norfolk, opening daily from the last Monday of January through the first Sunday of March."
Walsingham Abbey Snowdrops
"Up to a thousand torch-bearing guizers in Viking dress march through the dark and set a full-size longship galley ablaze."
Up Helly Aa
✦ Weird and Wonderful"Each late winter, a privately owned Berkshire estate opens its 5-acre beech wood to reveal one of the UK's largest carpets of snowdrops alongside the River Lambourn, in a tradition running for over 50 years."
Welford Park 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