When you hear the Cuckoo in England you know its Festival Time. In Cornwall they start things off with a bang, letting rip at their annual Mayday merrymaking down in Padstow, an otherwise peaceful fishing village slumbering on the Atlantic coast. Their 'Obby 'Oss Carnival revelries start at dawn and continue until dusk, by which time all are exhausted and the pubs have run dry!
Further west, near Land's End they dance the more sedate "Furry Dance" on May 8th at Helston. Led by the Town Mayor and his Lady, the whole town dances, the men in top hat and tails, the ladies in the best dresses, and the children in white, in a formal procession through the day through the streets; a charming historic dance on an occasion hallowed by time.
Folk dancing of a different kind takes place in the northwest of England on 14 -16th May. The Lancashire Clog Dancing Festival at Accrington and Oswaldwistle Mills, with clog dancing teams competing from towns and mills from all over Lancashire.
To the east, across the Pennine Chain of mountains is the ancient city of York, originally built by the Roman Legions 1900 years ago as Eboracum,and colonised nearly 1000 years later as Jorvik, by Viking settlers from Denmark.
From 1st - 3rd May the city of York goes Viking, for a fabulously staged Reenactment weekend that will have hotblooded Vikings hotfooting it to the historic fray from all over Europe. There will be much bartering of Viking period jewelry, costume and weaponry, and many a drinking horn of home brewed mead, and ale, quaffed each night at the Living history Encampment organised by the City of York's popular award winning tourist attraction the prestigious Jorvik Viking center and Museum. This looks set to become, like Sweden's Visby, one of the great annual Viking reenactment events in Northern Europe. Suite101 has an excellent history page on the Vikings in England.
And let us not forget the Annual World Duck Racing Championships being run on the village pond at Wymeswold in deepest Leicestershire, on May 9th.
If that does not sound quite your cup of tea, horn of mead, or duck soup, there are more sedate cultural Festivals to enjoy in Southern England; a feast of classical music, jazz, theater, and art, street parades and jollity.
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