Only in Britain could posters go up all over the countryside for cheese-rolling contests, scarecrow competitions and lawnmower races, and no one turn a single hair. As a nation, we’ve proudly kept many of our stranger folk traditions, and added a few new ones along the way.
If you’re looking for a day out with a difference this summer (or even some that comply with social distancing or that you could recreate at home), we’ve gathered a few ideas here. If you thought well-dressing and morris dancing was niche, prepare to be folking astounded.
Toe Wrestling
The World Toe Wrestling Championships is held in Derbyshire every July. It began in 1976 when a few friends down the pub were lamenting Britain’s lack of athletics success. Forty-four years later, it’s going strong and is held in the Bentley Brook Inn in Fenny Bentley most years. Bare-footed participants lock big toes over a tiny wrestling arena and compete to wrangle the other’s foot to the side first. The rules are similar to arm wrestling and you start with right feet, then swap to left, then back again. Be warned - toe wrestling has regularly ended in injury and even broken toes, so go easy if you’re holding your own championships at home. Or perhaps try Thumb Wars instead.
Bog Snorkelling
What better way to spend August Bank Holiday than snorkelling in a peat bog? Don’t answer that, but in case you were wondering, bog snorkelling is an event during which participants compete to do two lengths (60 yards each) of a water-filled trench cut through a peat bog, wearing snorkels and flippers. Swimming strokes may not be used - you may travel by means of flipper power alone. The Waen Rhydd peat bog near Llanwrtyd Wells in mid Wales has hosted the annual World Bog Snorkelling Championship since 1985. If you can’t make it there, perhaps get the paddling pool out at home.
The Burryman’s Parade
At a loose end on the second Friday of August? Fancy seeing a grown man covered head to toe in sticky burrs paraded around for nine hours, his arms supported on poles decorated with flowers? Then head to South Queensferry on the south bank of the Firth of Forth, where the Burryman (a human covered in sticky flower and seed heads from the burdock plant is guided through town, stopping at inns and alehouses and given drinks of whisky (through a straw to avoid the burrs) at each. Folklore tells that bad luck will befall the town if the Burryman is not given whisky and money each year, in a tradition that’s thought to be thousands of years old. We’ll give the whisky a go and leave the burrs on the plant, we think - they’re a devil to get out of wool.
Hallaton Hare Pie Scramble and Bottle-Kicking
Once described as ‘the bloodiest event in England’ this contest between the villages of Medbourne and Hallaton in Leicestershire is not for the faint-hearted. The competition, on Easter Monday, opens with a parade and large hare pie being blessed by a vicar, then cut up and thrown into the assembled crowd. There follows a race to get one of the barrels of beer (a bottle) over the other village’s boundary by any means, including kicking, throwing and rolling. It’s a terrifying free-for-all that makes a game of rugby look like a crochet circle in a nunnery. We aren’t sure this is one you’d want to try at home but there’s nothing to stop you making a rabbit pie and playing skittles with some beer bottles in the garden.
Burning of Bartle
If Guy Fawkes’ Night is not enough dangerous drunken revelry close to open flames for you in one calendar year, you might like to mark Burning Bartle weekend, held on the Saturday closest to St Bartholomew’s Day (24th August) in West Witton, North Yorkshire. Bartle is thought to have been a sheep stealer who was caught some centuries back (us British do enjoy a grudge as well as a weird festival, don’t we?). Today the village marks it by creating a huge effigy of Bartle, much like a ‘Guy’, complete with mask, sheep’s wool hair and beard and glowing eyes (just to terrify any tourists not in the know, we suppose), which is then propped against a dry stone wall and set on fire to much singing and shouting, before everyone decamps to the pub. It’s certainly a niche celebration but we all have a Bartle in our lives, somewhere. Make your own effigy, have a bonfire and sit and enjoy your grudge over a beer or two in the comfort of your own garden. Glowing eyes optional.
In our July issue you’ll find the first in our new series, Modern Eccentrics, in which we celebrate people who are passionate about their pastimes and happily doing things a bit differently. This month, Julian Owen meets some thoroughly modern morris dancers.
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