10 eccentric British countryside experiences you must have this summer

Straight from the pages of Enid Blyton, these traditional elements of a quintessential country getaway are as quaint as they are quirky

Holidaying in the British countryside used to mean warm beer, picnics on tartan blankets, wasps in abundance, village greens with ice cream vans and, somewhere in the background, that satisfying “thwock” of wood on leather.
Family games possibly included a treasure hunt, making toy boats out of bulrushes, playing Pooh sticks or – if you roped in neighbouring holidaymakers – rounders (until someone swiped the ball into the undergrowth, or the dog ran off with it).
Tasked with collecting the milk or eggs from the nearby farm, children ran wild. Days out inevitably included “the walk”, with the promise of a stream for dam-building to drum up enthusiasm. A holiday highlight would be a visit to the local agricultural show or village fête, where Dad would be embarrassed at the coconut shy and no-one could believe the size of the prize bull.  
Everything was as comforting and innocent as an Enid Blyton novel. Well, almost. Obviously, getting to Little-Crumpet-by-the-Marsh (insert favourite holiday destination as applicable) involved wrong turns, tractor stand-offs and tensions in the front-seat-map-reading department, because sat-nav had yet to be invented.
Happy days. 
But, fear not. Those quirks and oddities of the Great British Countryside are still to be found. And, just for fun, you could try finding them without Google Maps.
Take one bridge, one gently flowing small river, and one short-ish stick. Drop it (no throwing allowed) over the upstream side of the bridge, move smartly to the other side and see whose stick sails out first. It requires zero dexterity and very little skill except, possibly, learning how to drop your stick a nano-second before competitors without being detected. 
This brilliant game was devised by Winnie the Pooh when he was idly lying beside the bridge at Pooh Corner. Although legend has it that it was actually Winnie the Pooh’s creator, and children’s author, AA Milne, who invented the game for his son, Christopher Robin. Plenty of bridges are suitable but the original is Pooh Sticks Bridge, on the edge of Ashdown Forest in Sussex.
Stay: Spring Farm Cottage, in Cackle Street hamlet, Ashdown Forest, sleeps two; three-night stay from £471 (01237 426781; holidaycottages.co.uk).
The thing about village cricket is that, generally, the rivalry is friendly. Any disputed calls – leg-before-wicket, caught behind, and other arcane descriptions – are quickly forgotten over the post-match tea and cakes, or pint in the pub. 
From the spectator point of view, watching a game is like being cocooned in an episode of Midsomer Murders. The backdrops can be sublime: Luddesdowne Cricket Club nestles next to a Kent vineyard; lush woodland frames the gabled clubhouse at Brook in Surrey; Bamburgh Castle looms over the village’s ground in Northumberland. And the cricketing rules (which can soon turn murder motives, if we’re sticking to the television drama theme) can occasionally appear bonkers. But it’s wonderfully soporific, especially when watched from a deckchair. 
Stay: The Lord Crewe, Bamburgh (01668 214243; lord-crewe.co.uk) has B&B doubles from £240. 
Drive through Derbyshire villages in the summer and you’ll notice brightly coloured artworks decorating the water fountains and wells. Visit Egton Bridge in North Yorkshire on the first Tuesday in August and you’ll find enormous gooseberries being carefully weighed. Turn up in Egremont in Cumbria during a late-September weekend, and you can watch perfectly sane people trying to pull the ugliest face. 
These are just some of the delightful or frankly eccentric traditions at which Britain excels. Derbyshire’s “well dressings” are intricate collages of flower petals and vegetation; Egton Bridge Gooseberry Show celebrates the heaviest gooseberry; while the Gurning World Championships are held at Egremont Crab Fair. A newcomer – 30th anniversary this year – is Kettlewell’s Scarecrow Festival when, in August, the Yorkshire village, in Wharfedale, is dotted with colourful and fantastically dressed scarecrows.
Stay: Racehorses Hotel, Kettlewell (01756 317996; racehorseshotel.co.uk) has doubles from £125, including breakfast.
The small country show – as opposed to the county show, with its sponsored marquees and celebrity appearances – are delightful mainly because they’re not slick and PR-polished. Honest, friendly and fun, here you’ll find country folk quietly displaying their skills, from terrier-racing to sheepdog trials, giant vegetables to prize sheep, fell-racing to flower arranging. Enormous sheep look faintly bemused while judges feel their haunches; pleased-as-punch children clutch prizes for winning races; and the cakes tent is full of sinful temptations.
Alwinton Show, in north Northumberland, is traditionally the county’s last of the year (October 12). Overlooking the Coquet valley, it includes Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling, a pipe band, and plenty of sheep. 
Stay: Chaffinch Cottage, near Alwinton, Rothbury, sleeps four, three-night stay from £601 (01573 226711; crabtreeandcrabtree.com).
Imagine a trestle table, neatly stacked with fresh eggs, on your average busy high street – and an invitation to buy and put the money in the honesty box. Would it work? Place the table in the countryside, however, where there’s no CCTV or passing crowds, and people wouldn’t dream of not paying. 
In an age where shop-lifting is rising, the honesty box is thriving. And with tempting items from organic vegetables to home-made jams, cakes to chutneys, chocolate bars to flapjacks. They can be found on roadsides on the North York Moors, outside farms in the Lake District and, perhaps most famously, in Shetland, where the Cake Fridge had a starring role in the BBC’s eponymous crime series (although no fridges were harmed in its production).
Stay: Fort Charlotte Guest House, Lerwick, Shetland (01595 692140; fortcharlotte.co.uk) has B&B doubles from £140 (two-night minimum). 
Pick-your-own (PYO) is like having your own allotment without the hassle of looking after it. You just enjoy the best bits: the fun of finding the ripe fruit, the satisfaction when it plops into your hands and that particular taste – a mix of sunshine, fresh air and, well, fruitiness – that only straight-from-the-ground produce contains. 
And it’s not just the well-known strawberries and raspberries. Gooseberries, redcurrants, blueberries, blackcurrants, tayberries as well as cherries, plums and apples can be picked throughout the country, from the Scottish Highlands to the English south coast.
Family-run Border Berries, at Rutherford in the Scottish Borders, has been growing berries since the 1960s and is the largest PYO in southern Scotland. Fruits are all grown outdoors, too; no polytunnels.
Stay: The Wheel House, near Kelso, sleeps four; three-night stay from £581 (01573 226711; crabtreeandcrabtree.com). 
If the winter highlight of any self-respecting village is the Christmas show, the summer equivalent is the village fête. Typically held on the village green or playing field – or, if it’s a well-heeled village, in the garden of the Big House – it’s a mix of fun, games and polite competitiveness. (Flower and produce displays can be hotly contested – also frequently serving as motive in the aforementioned Midsomer Murders.) 
Fête perennials include tombola stalls, sack races, bric-a-brac stalls, guess-the-weight (of a cake or jar of sweets) and hook-a-duck, while the more creative might include dog-and-owner look-a-likes. Local bands might feature, plus, obviously, home-made cake and one of those enormous tea urns.
The Swafield village fête near North Walsham, North Norfolk, is a corker – held in early July in the gardens of Swafield Hall with sideshows, bands, dog show, fortune-teller and hook-a-duck. One to mark for next year.
Stay: The Gunton Arms, Thorpe Market (01263 832010; theguntonarms.co.uk) has B&B doubles from £140. 
The key to a good picnic is simplicity and portability. Nobody wants to be faffing around pouring a freshly whisked miso dressing over an Ottolenghi salad while kneeling awkwardly on a scratchy blanket. Nothing wrong with sandwiches, quiche and sausage rolls; just ensure that things only require fingers (butter scones ahead), that you have everyone’s favourite, and that you serve the food on jolly patterned picnic plates. 
The picnic site must have a view and, preferably, be near to open space so everyone can let off steam and/or escape for a snooze. Tried-and-tested locations include Ilkley Moor, in Yorkshire, with views up Wharfedale; Box Hill in Surrey’s North Downs (where Jane Austen’s Emma delivered her crushing lines to Miss Bates); or the magnificent parkland of Chatsworth House. 
Stay: The Cavendish Hotel, Baslow (01246 582311; devonshirehotels.co.uk) sits close to Chatsworth and has doubles from £200, including breakfast. 
Watching a steam train chug across the countryside, white plume trailing like an extravagant feather boa, compels many of us to rush to a vantage point and wave madly at the passengers. Even though we haven’t a clue who they are. Steam is full of nostalgia, excitement and romance; a heady mix of Brief Encounter, The Railway Children and The Orient Express. 
Fortunately, due often to hard-working volunteers, heritage lines have been rescued: the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, for example, and The Bluebell Railway in Sussex. One of the most popular – due, in part, to its cute one-third size locomotives – is the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway which puffs seven glorious miles up the Eskdale valley in Cumbria, between Ravenglass and Dalegarth stations.
Stay: The Woolpack Inn, Eskdale (01946 723230; woolpack.co.uk) has doubles from £110 including breakfast.
Morris dancing often gets a bad name (something to do with men waving handkerchiefs) but you can bet your bottom dollar that, if a “Morris Side” (women can be Morris dancers, too) turns up in the village square with their jolly bells and tight breeches, and starts jingling and weaving their intricate steps, a happy crowd will gather. Dating back to the 15th century, it’s just one form of English folk dancing. Others that you might find on village high days and holidays include maypole dancing, longsword dancing, rapper dancing (flexible swords), and clog-and-step dancing. 
Cotswold Morris is a particularly energetic form and the Gloucestershire Morris side are a particularly engaging team; they start their dancing season on May Day with a sunrise dance on Painswick Beacon. They perform in various villages near their base in Gloucester.
Stay: The Falcon, Painswick (01452 222820; thefalconpainswick.com) has B&B doubles from £140.

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