Adam and I are currently up in Leeds visiting family, and as our trip coincided with the famous Kettlewell Scarecrow Festival, we couldn’t resist going to see it ourselves.
There have been scarecrow based events going on in Kettlewell for many years, and people come from all over to see their annual festival. The little idyllic village sees its community working hard together to produce fun new ideas each year, all in aid of local good causes.
There is a different theme each year to inspire the scarecrow creators and to give clues to all the visitors taking part in the scarecrow trail. This year was unsurprisingly an Olympic themed festival, with the names of lots of the participating countries as answers to the trail quiz.
There were all sorts of wonderful ideas though, including a scarecrow scene inspired by the Willow Pattern, Postman Pat, a Maypole with scarecrow dancers and even a Boris Johnson scarecrow stuck on a zip wire! I was so delighted to see all the different ideas and all the effort that clearly goes in. The village itself is just so perfect for such an event….it’s so very quiet and pretty, so you can wander about at leisure in a gorgeous setting.
The village lays on a campsite and car parks to accommodate the extra visitors, and open up spaces to sell refreshments. We stopped off in one of the little cutesy tea rooms, for Yorkshire tea, and scones with cream and jam. We needed it too, with so many scarecrows to see, we were there for a good few hours finding them all and taking lots of photos.
Having found as many as we could though, we got back in the car and made our way to nearby Threshfield for a pub lunch. We’d been to the Old Hall Inn before when camping near Grassington and loved their menu full of local produce. Excited by the rare chance to eat chicken (it’s not nearly often enough Free Range and we don’t have it much at home as Adam is intolerant to it) I ordered the Southern Fried Chicken Burger, whilst Adam and his Mum chose the trio of venison (in a mini pie, sausages and with red currant jus), Vera went for the Lamb Tagine, and Ali the rather epic burger. Everything was gorgeous, and super filling! We practically rolled out of the pub, and only just managed not to fall asleep in the car!
Near home though, at Calverley, we spotted another bunch of scarecrows too! We all had such a wonderful day…. I took lots of photos which I’ll be sure to share once I’ve uploaded them at home…..until then though, here are my instagram snaps from the day…..
Ems x
