I understand when the festival started, way back in 2005, an Ironmen Walk was one of the very first to be devised. The creator & walk-leader, John Parnell, a very keen Morris Dancer and part of a local set of dancers “The Ironmen” put together a route linking up a number of dances named after near-by villages. Throughout the walk he enthused about the background to various traditions & history of Morris Dancing in the area. Walking & learning the route with John earlier thi

One of the mostly requested asks from our walkers is to have more walks and more places available. We can't offer much more than we do, as we have an extensive programme of over 60 walks ranging from 2 to 21 miles which has grown massively since our first Festival in 2005. Booking Tips With a mailing list of over 1,200 people, demand for the places is always going to be high, so here are some tips for booking: Set up an Eventbrite account before bookings open - this retains s

Our Spring 2025 festival coincided with the commemoration of VE day on Thursday 8th May when 80 years previously at 3-00pm, victory was declared and marked across the UK with so many commemorative events. To acknowledge a quite remarkable event in our history I put together a new “Walk & Talk” route which was well attended and is to be repeated (with some extra info) during our 2026 Festival on Saturday 9th May as “Gorge Wartime Memories”. Looking back, as soon as war was dec

After 9 months of planning, route design, risk assessments, recces during the winter months, updates to our website, leaflet design,...

Graham Burgess and Neil Cartman who did so much to shape and develop the Festival Ten years ago to the day we were celebrating the 10th...

Neil at the top of his favourite hill (not!) at Wyke and forever called Neil's Favourite Hill If somebody had told me in 2011 that a very...