"Overdale, under Kilnsey Crag: the Upper Wharfedale show on the first day of September, where Dales cattle and sheep are judged with the limestone overhang looming fifty feet above the showfield."

Kilnsey Show

"The 119th Grand Annual Show in idyllic Upper Swaledale, with Swaledale sheep showing, sheepdog running, a fell race, crafts and produce, followed by the whole village singing with Muker Silver Band at 5pm."

Muker Show

"A whole Suffolk market town turns its churches, pubs and castle bailey into stages for a long weekend of folk where most of the music is free and open to all."

Bungay Folk Festival

"Possibly England's oldest continuous sheepdog trials, running since 1898 in front of Longshaw Lodge on the Peak District moors, where a special train once brought 700 spectators down from Manchester."

Longshaw Sheepdog Trials

"One of the oldest carnivals in the UK dating to 1888, Ryde's illuminated procession closes the Island's summer carnival season with a spectacular parade of floats, marching bands and samba groups."

Ryde Carnival

"Over 50 events across four days in the Orchard County of Northern Ireland, where the apple orchards are heavy with cider fruit and the programme runs from orchard tours and artisan markets to 5-star open-fire dining under the trees."

Armagh Food and Cider Weekend

"Vintage biplanes drone overhead while hard driving bluegrass and old time pickers jam around a bonfire on one of the quirkiest festival fields in the country."

Didmarton Bluegrass Festival

"A friendly small scale singing festival in the Surrey countryside where everyone learns a cappella harmonies entirely by ear and ends the weekend performing them around a campfire."

SingFest

"A riverside marquee at Croft Farm fills with West Country ciders and perries for a weekend of tasting beneath the slopes of Bredon Hill."

Bredon Cider Festival

"Every first September weekend, the hilltop village of Norland transforms via a self-guided trail through narrow lanes and gardens, with villagers creating hundreds of characters on this year's Sports, Leisure and Games theme, all raising money for local causes."

Norland Scarecrow Festival

"Three days of grand ring spectacle in the 1000-acre parkland of Chatsworth House, with hot air balloon ascents, lurcher racing, celebrity chefs, country sports and a vintage fun fair against one of England's great ducal estates."

Chatsworth Country Fair

"The Goodwood motor circuit returns to its 1948 specification each September for a three-day historic racing meeting where spectators and competitors alike wear period dress, the paddock smells of Castrol R, and ERA and pre-war Bentley machinery is raced in anger as though the last seventy years had not happened."

Goodwood Revival

"Hop-picking made this Kentish market town. Every September the harvest reclaims the streets: real ale, folk dancing, a parade, stalls and the smell of hops in the air. Free to attend."

Faversham Hop Festival

"One of the biggest one-day shows in England, held in the Cotswolds on the first Saturday of September, Shetland Pony Grand National, champion cattle, and a showground that fills the whole town with its presence."

Moreton Show

"Two September days on the showground at Dorchester with the county at full stretch: livestock from the Purbeck coast and the vale, local cider, local cheese, and Dorset going about its business with its customary lack of fuss."

Dorset County Show

"A sixteen foot thatched rush cart pulled by sixty men in whites and clogs winds between the pubs of the Calder Valley, morris sides dancing it from inn to inn over a September weekend."

Sowerby Bridge Rushbearing

"The most famous of the Highland games, with tossing the caber, hill races and massed pipe bands, often attended by royalty."

Braemar Gathering

"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

"Sixty artisan producers fill the walled garden at Holkham Hall for a free September weekend market, now in its 17th year, with fresh game, bakes, chocolates, local ales and a cookery theatre in one of Norfolk's finest estate settings."

North Norfolk Food and Drink Festival

"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

"On Easdale Island, accessible only by foot ferry, competitors skim slates across a flooded quarry pool on the last Saturday of summer, in the world's only skimming championship held on a Scottish island with no cars and a population of around 60."

World Stone Skimming Championships

"A tiny, beloved community show at Lealholm Sports Field in the Esk Valley where farm produce, flowers, baking and local crafts fill the village field, with generations of neighbours competing for honour in every class."

Lealholm Farm Produce and Horticultural Show

"The last big show of the Ceredigion summer season at Hengae Fields on the wooded Teifi, drawing competitors from across the county for cattle, horses, sheep and a horticultural tent that rounds off the village show circuit with real finality."

Llandysul Show

"The Malton showground in the Ryedale market town hosts this September traction engine rally where working steam engines from across Yorkshire and the North compete in road runs and working demonstrations, the last major steam show of the Yorkshire summer season."

Yorkshire Traction Engine Rally

"The tiny village of Kildale in the Cleveland Hills holds its annual show on a September Saturday when the moors above are burning with late heather and the show ring is surrounded by some of the finest high moorland scenery on the North York Moors."

Kildale Show

"A classic Welsh mountain show high on the Brecon Beacons, where Welsh Mountain sheep and Black Cattle compete in a village famous for its autumn sheep mart with the Black Mountains visible in every direction."

Sennybridge Show

"One of Hampshire's finest one-day agricultural shows at Tichborne Park since 1908, with prize livestock, horse competitions, vintage machinery, local food and a full countryside celebration."

Alresford Show

"The market town of Devizes at the heart of the Wiltshire countryside holds its food festival in and around the ancient market place each September, celebrating the county's dairy, game, beer and artisan produce in a town whose canal, castle and brewery make it one of the most characterful places to eat well in the south of England."

Devizes Food Festival

"The 12th annual festival fills Newtown's Town Hall Grounds with over 60 local and international food producers, chef demonstrations, live music across genres and a dedicated children's village in the heart of Mid Wales."

Newtown Food Festival

"The elegant Georgian village of Hillsborough in County Down hosts its oyster festival each September, where Carlingford and Strangford Lough oysters are opened in competition for a world title and served with champagne in the village square while chef demonstrations and live music fill the streets of one of Northern Ireland's prettiest villages."

Hillsborough International Oyster Festival

"A traditional Dales-edge show of sheep, cattle, poultry, handicraft and horticulture with no horse classes, ending the show season where the Yorkshire moors meet Lancashire."

Bentham Show

"One of the oldest Yorkshire Dales sheep shows, established over a century ago at Mossdale near Hawes, with local breeds, home produce, walking-stick carvery and Hawes Silver Band on the windswept moor."

Moorcock Show

"Games in the heart of Perthshire soft fruit country the weekend after Braemar, when the season's competitors make one of their final gatherings of the year on Bogles Field."

Blairgowrie Highland Games

"A free all-day village fete on Bray's village green, built by the community for the community, with live music, food, family games and village tradition in one of Berkshire's most picturesque Thames-side villages."

Bray Village Fete

"For 16 September days, hundreds of artists and makers open studios, homes and galleries across the Lewes District villages from Lewes to Seaford, Newhaven and the surrounding countryside in its 32nd year as the South East's most accessible open art festival."

Artwave Festival

"Held on the green beside the River Wharfe since the sixteenth century, with the brutal 1.5 mile dash up Burnsall Fell as its breathless centrepiece."

Burnsall Feast Sports and Classic Fell Race

"Six dancers carry ancient reindeer antlers, some carbon dated to the eleventh century, twelve miles around a Staffordshire village on Wakes Monday, joined by a hobby horse, a Fool and Maid Marian."

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

"Anglesey producers gather in the shadow of the medieval castle on the Menai Strait."

Beaumaris Food Festival

"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

"Five days of real ale among the steam engines and the great brick viaduct at the East Anglian Railway Museum, the village beer festival that comes with platforms."

Chappel Beer Festival

"Two September days at Crooklands, where Cumbria's livestock and rural skills are given the space they deserve, Herdwick sheep competing in the ring with the Lake District fells as the weather behind them."

Westmorland County Show

"Three days of morris sides, ceilidh and song in a Herefordshire market town surrounded by hop yards and cider orchards."

Bromyard Folk Festival

"One of the original independent food festivals, set in the castle of this celebrated Marches food town."

Ludlow Food Festival

"England's only festival of medieval music fills fourteenth century Bolton Castle and its church with lute, oud and bagpipe as performers explore the forgotten margins of the medieval world."

Medieval Music in the Dales

"The biggest dance festival in the UK brings over two hundred Morris and dance performances and fifty plus bands to fill a Dorset seaside town with colour and music."

Swanage Folk Festival

"Every September the cobbled streets and cottages of this dramatic Yorkshire fishing village open as pop-up galleries for around 100 artists, with heritage talks, lighting installations and live music filling the weekend."

Staithes Festival of Arts and Heritage

"The most prestigious sheepdog event in the British Isles, held at the Daylesford Estate where the finest handlers from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales compete across three days for the International Supreme title."

International Sheepdog Championship

"Sea shanty crews from across Britain take over five coastal venues, turning the harbour lanes of a tiny North Norfolk village into a roving maritime singalong all weekend."

Brancaster Staithe Sea Shanty Festival

"Over 100 makers fill the stunning grounds of Cardigan Castle for three days of sculpture, demonstrations, walk-about theatre, Welsh language workshops and the best of contemporary British craft overlooking the River Teifi."

Craft Festival Wales

"A celebration of Scotland's last remaining wild and native oyster bed in Loch Ryan, with celebrity chef demos, the Scottish Oyster Shucking Championships, live music and a vast oyster bar on Stranraer Harbour."

Stranraer Oyster Festival

"Whitstable's reborn oyster festival, in its 5th year, fills the Grading Shed, East Quay and Long Beach with the historic Oyster Landing Ceremony, live music, a mud tug-of-war, a samba procession and Marshall Jefferson on the Saturday night."

Whitstable Rocks Oyster Festival

"Somerset in September: a town that has been judging cheese since 1876, Cheddar at its finest, Caerphilly from the Welsh end of things, and a show ring that still takes its goats as seriously as anything."

Frome Cheese Show

"A South Downs village fair that has been trading sheep since the 12th century, still entirely about the sheep, still held on the village green, and still rather pleased with itself about both."

Findon Sheep Fair

"Horse and tractor ploughing judged furrow by furrow across a Kent stubble field, with a farmers market, gymkhana and the unhurried social weather of a working country day."

Weald of Kent Ploughing Match

"Heavy events, dancing and a hill race above the town, closing with massed pipe bands in Highland Perthshire."

Pitlochry Highland Games

"A one-day Hampshire show by the Test valley with livestock, heavy horses and a grand parade."

Romsey Show

"Running every year since 1844, this is one of the biggest one day shows in Britain with steam corner, a companion dog show and freestyle motocross."

Usk Show

"Two days of countryside life at a Ribble Valley village showground, with Vale of Lune Harriers in the main ring, gundog scurries, birds of prey, horse classes and live music drawing families from across the North West."

Lancashire Game and Country Festival

"A traditional agricultural show hosted in turn by the farming families of Dunsop Bridge, Newton-in-Bowland and Slaidburn so no two years are the same, set deep in the Forest of Bowland AONB."

Hodder Valley Show

"A 70-acre site in Lower Wensleydale packed with steam ploughing engines, vintage vehicles, falconry, a craft fair and a food market, in a valley setting that makes this one of the most scenic steam events in the north."

Hunton Steam Gathering

"The Scottish Vintage Tractor and Engine Club brings a September rally to the Scone Palace parklands in Perthshire, where vintage steam, working horses and old farming machinery are demonstrated against the backdrop of the coronation place of Scottish kings and the finest parkland setting of any British vintage rally."

Farming Yesteryear and Vintage Rally

"The Pennine market town of Penistone holds one of the oldest agricultural shows in Yorkshire each September, a show where the Millstone Grit country of the South Yorkshire uplands meets the farming traditions of the Pennine Edge, and where the sheep classes include breeds that have grazed these hills since the medieval wool trade."

Penistone Agricultural Show

"Over 140 artists throw open homes, gardens and public spaces across the historic Derbyshire market town for one autumn weekend, transforming Wirksworth into a walking gallery with free shuttle buses, street music and food stalls."

Wirksworth Festival Art and Architecture Trail

"The Victorian clifftop resort of Saltburn closes its main street to traffic and fills it with artisan food producers from across the North East for this September market, where the restored pier and the cliff tramway form an extraordinary backdrop to a genuinely local food event with no national chains in sight."

Saltburn Food Festival

"The walled harbour town of Tenby hosts a week of exhibitions, concerts, comedy, poetry and visual arts each September when the summer crowds have gone and the light on the Pembrokeshire coast turns the town's coloured houses into something you want to paint rather than just photograph."

Tenby Arts Festival

"The grounds of the National Motor Museum in the New Forest become the largest outdoor sale of motoring items in Europe each September, where thousands of traders spread automobiliana, spares, tools and historic vehicles across the fields of Beaulieu estate in a weekend that the motoring world plans its diary around."

Beaulieu International Autojumble

"One of Bedfordshire's most traditional village shows held in St Mary's Field, with competitive classes from flower arranging to baking, a craft fair and a barn dance that fills the marquee all evening."

Potton Show

"A medieval-rooted fair with onion-eating contests and the heaviest onion competition in a Forest of Dean town."

Newent Onion Fayre

"The congregation joins hands around the church in an embracing ceremony in this Peak lead-mining town."

Wirksworth Clypping

"Competitors lob black puddings underarm at a stack of Yorkshire puddings on a plinth, settling an old rivalry."

World Black Pudding Throwing Championships

"Jousting, falconry, scurry driving and gun dog displays on the Royal Estate at Sandringham, where traditional country sports play out across two autumn days on the King's own Norfolk ground."

Sandringham Game and Country 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

"Four days of self-guided walks through some of Britain's finest scenery, ending with a Blister Ball of live music and dancing."

Mid-Wales 4 Day Walking Festival

"The sport's ultimate contest held only every three years in the region widely considered the birthplace of the Border Collie, where handlers from across the world gather at Huntington Farm for five extraordinary days."

World Sheepdog Trials

"Four days of traditional music on an Hebridean island reachable only by ferry, workshops, open sessions, ceilidhs in the island hall, and the Atlantic on all four sides."

Ceol Cholasa: Colonsay Folk Festival

"Four days of Aberdeenshire artisan food producers, local folk musicians and community spirit in a Royal Deeside village, where the September apple harvest season and the warmth of a rural Scottish gathering make for an unusually nourishing weekend."

Tarland Food and Music Festival

"Three days in a Black Isle village near Inverness where the sessions run late and the Moray Firth catches the September light outside, a small Highland folk festival doing exactly what it promised."

Ardersier Folk Festival

"A 35 year old festival that scatters concerts and slow sessions for beginners between a parish church, the common and snug pub back rooms in a Wharfedale market town."

Otley Folk Festival

"Across 400 acres at Old Warden Park, showman's engines power the fairground after dark beneath the Victorian house of the Shuttleworth Collection."

Bedfordshire Steam & Country Fayre

"For ten September days, Parliament Street and the surrounding streets of historic York fill with over 150 food and drink producers, chef demonstrations, artisan markets, pop-up restaurants and tastings celebrating Yorkshire produce."

York Food and Drink Festival

"The whole town becomes the 1940s for a weekend, with 20,000 visitors in period dress, a vintage vehicle parade, wartime shop fronts and steam trains running the Poppy Line through to Holt."

Sheringham 1940s Weekend

"Crabs (crab apples, thrown from a cart) in the morning, greasy pole and hound trailing through the day, and in the evening competitors push their faces through a horse collar to achieve the most grotesque expression possible, since 1267."

Egremont Crab Fair and World Gurning Championships

"Two September days at the Berkshire county showground: livestock, rural crafts, local food and a show ring that has been drawing the county together for well over a century."

Newbury Show

"A one-day North Yorkshire show in September that has been the anchor of the Stokesley social calendar since 1859, prize Cleveland Bays, heavy horses, North York Moors ponies, and a town that turns out completely."

Stokesley Show

"The food festival that started the whole British movement, filling a Monmouthshire market town under the Sugar Loaf with Welsh lamb, farmhouse cheese and orchard cider every September."

Abergavenny Food Festival

"One of the earliest events of the Sussex bonfire season sends costumed societies and burning torches through a pretty Wealden village high street."

Mayfield Bonfire

"Flintshire's market town throws a 20th anniversary feast of cookery theatre, live music and the best of north Wales producers."

Mold Food and Drink Festival

"On the wide clay plateau of the Hoo Peninsula above the Thames estuary, ploughmen from across Kent compete at Newlands Farm in an autumn match where the vast skies and the distant flicker of the estuary light add a particular melancholy grandeur to the furrows."

Cliffe Ploughing Match

"The North Somerset Agricultural Society's ploughing and hedgelaying match brings competitors to farmland on the edge of the Mendips each September, one of the few places in England where the ancient double craft of ploughing and laying a hedge is still judged in competition on the same day."

North Somerset Ploughing Match

"Hardwick Hall's magnificent Elizabethan estate in north Derbyshire provides the setting for this artisan food and drink festival, where producers from across the Midlands set up in the shadow of one of the most celebrated great houses in England on a weekend when the park is at its September best."

Hardwick Hall Artisan Food Festival

"In its 21st year, Melbourne Festival opens private gardens, historic halls and family homes not usually accessible to the public, creating a walking art trail through this South Derbyshire market town for 172 artists across 65 venues."

Melbourne Festival Art and Architecture Trail

"Bewerley Park on the third Sunday of September: the valley gathers itself for one more great day before autumn sets in, with Dales ponies, produce and the particular amber light of Nidderdale in September."

Nidderdale Show

"Parishioners join hands to embrace their church among the famous 99 yews of this Cotswold wool village."

Painswick Clypping Ceremony

"The Staffordshire village of Pattingham mounts scarecrows through its streets and gardens for three late September days, running alongside fairground rides and food stalls at the village club in a festival that has quietly become one of the best attended scarecrow events in the Midlands."

Pattingham Scarecrow Festival

"Five days of classical music, recitals and choral performances in and around the magnificent 7th-century Hexham Abbey, one of the finest ecclesiastical settings for live music in northern England."

Hexham Abbey Festival of Music and Arts

"A small but perfectly formed music festival with a heart of folk spread across barns and an orchard on a working farm on the wild North Norfolk coast."

Deepdale Festival

"A volunteer run weekend of folk in a North Pennine village that climaxes with the marketplace burning of a wooden sculpture of the legendary Allendale Wolf."

Allen Valleys Folk Festival

"On a remote Hebridean island of more deer than people, a village hall and marquee fill with trad sessions, ceilidhs, step dancing and a samba procession."

Jura Music Festival

"A free three-day town-wide immersion in wartime Britain with a real Spitfire, tanks, military vehicles, re-enactors in period dress, swing bands, a blitz ball and the Longest Yarn exhibition bringing the whole of Welshpool back to the 1940s."

Welshpool 1940s Weekend

"Scotland's National Book Town hosts its 25th festival across ten days and 200 events in this Galloway village of fifteen bookshops, where authors, musicians and artists fill the town hall, bookshops and gardens with literature, music and theatre."

Wigtown Book Festival

"Rare breed sheep fill the market square with sheep racing, shearing and Wensleydale crafts."

Masham Sheep Fair

"Suffolk producers gather at Snape Maltings by the river for two days of tastings and demonstrations."

Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival

"One of the longest established and friendliest food festivals in Wales, spread beside the Town Moor with chefs, stalls and local bands."

Narberth Food Festival

"Cockermouth's flagship food and drink festival fills the market town where Wordsworth was born with Cumbrian produce, chef demonstrations, artisan stalls and live music each September."

Taste Cumbria Cockermouth

"A Lakeland show since 1866 in the remote beauty of Eskdale, proud home of the World Champion Herdwick sheep, with hound trails, fell races, terriers, wrestling and the ancient Cumbrian craft of stick and crook making."

Eskdale Show

"The Staffordshire County Showground organises district ploughing and hedgelaying matches each autumn, and the Eccleshall round draws competitors from across the county to farmland around one of Staffordshire's quieter market towns for a full day of working countryside skills."

Eccleshall District Ploughing and Hedgelaying Match

"The Three Counties Showground at the foot of the Malvern Hills hosts its annual autumn show each late September, combining fine food and drink producers from the Welsh Marches with garden produce, livestock and countryside crafts in one of the best-attended autumn shows in the Midlands."

Malvern Autumn Show

"The handsome Oxfordshire market town of Thame fills its wide high street with artisan food and drink producers on the last weekend of September, a free festival that draws chefs for demonstrations and locals for the kind of independent food stalls that national food courts have been failing to replicate for thirty years."

Thame Food Festival

"A world-renowned week celebrating Britain's most northerly native sheep and the Shetland textile tradition, with knitting demonstrations, croft visits, a new hat pattern each year and events spread across the islands for 2026's Together Through Makkin theme."

Shetland Wool Week