Weird Sports Played in English Country Towns

A nation that takes play seriously

There is a particular kind of English afternoon that involves a wet field, a raffle, a loudspeaker with a dying battery and a crowd of several hundred people watching someone fall over. Weird sports are not a fringe curiosity here; they are a fixture of the country calendar, and most of them exist for two reasons only — to entertain the village and to raise money for a good cause.

The pattern is remarkably consistent. A custom survives from the medieval period, or gets invented in a pub one winter evening, or is revived by a committee who thought the town needed something to put it on the map. Then it runs, year after year, usually on the same bank holiday, in the same field, with the same families winning.

Cheese, barrels and the art of falling downhill

The most famous of the lot is the cheese rolling on Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, held on the late May bank holiday. A round of Double Gloucester is released down a slope that is steep enough to be genuinely alarming, and a pack of competitors throws itself after it. The winner is the first to the bottom. The prize is the cheese. The injuries are real, the first-aid cover is excellent, and spectators stand on the slope at their own risk — which is exactly what several thousand of them do each year.

Barrels come in two varieties. Rolled barrels appear at village fetes and harbour festivals up and down the country, where teams steer a barrel along a set course; the trick is to keep it going in a straight line, which almost nobody manages. Carried barrels are a different discipline altogether, and the most spectacular example is the tar barrels of Ottery St Mary in Devon on 5 November, where flaming barrels soaked in tar are hoisted onto shoulders and run through crowded streets. Go if you can, but go early, wear old clothes and keep well back.

Conger cuddling and other seaside oddities

Down on the Dorset coast, there is a contest that sounds like a misunderstanding and is in fact a long-standing tradition. Conger cuddling turns up during the annual lifeboat week in Lyme Regis. A dead conger eel is swung by the tail like a mallet, and the objective is to knock a seated opponent off a greased pole. It is faintly grisly, entirely good-humoured, and has raised a great deal of money for the local lifeboat crew over the years.

Seaside towns are a rich seam of this sort of thing: pea throwing, crabbing competitions, raft races, sandcastle contests judged on the tide line, and the occasional wife-carrying race, adopted from abroad with typical English seriousness and a proper set of rules.

Gurning, toe wrestling and other pub-yard contests

Inland, the contests get stranger still. A selection worth planning a trip around:

• Gurning at the Egremont Crab Fair in Cumbria, recorded as far back as 1267. Competitors push their heads through a horse collar and pull the ugliest face they can manage, with a championship title and local glory at stake. Held in September.
• Toe wrestling, traditionally staged in a Derbyshire village in the summer. Competitors lock bare toes in a padded pit and attempt to pin their opponent's foot, best of three, under the eye of a referee who takes it all extremely seriously.
• Nettle eating, held at a Dorset pub in August. Entrants eat leaves stripped from a measured length of stalk, usually after a pint, and the person who leaves the longest bare stem wins.
• Snail racing in Norfolk, where snails are placed in the middle of a table and the first to reach the outer circle takes the title. Training regimes are said to involve lettuce.
• Welly wanging in West Yorkshire, where competitors hurl a Wellington boot for distance. The boot is provided, so everyone gets the same unfair advantage.
• Dwile flonking, an East Anglian tradition in which a player spins with a beer-soaked rag and flicks it at the opposing team, with dancing, forfeits and a good deal of confusion all round.
• Shin kicking at the Cotswold Olimpick Games in Gloucestershire, held around late May. Competitors stuff their trousers with straw and kick each other's shins until one gives way. There is a technique to it, and nobody who has tried it pretends otherwise.

How to watch well, and how to have a go

• Check the date before you travel. Many events hang off a bank holiday, a saint's day or the tide, and a few have paused or moved in recent years.
• Take cash. Gate money, collections, raffle tickets and the cake stall are the whole point of the day.
• Wear closed shoes and stand behind the rope, on the uphill side if there is one. Sandals and a falling barrel are a poor combination.
• Most contests accept entries on the day. Sign up at the table by the gate, expect a short disclaimer, and listen to the steward — they have seen every possible way of getting this wrong.
• Ask before photographing gurners and children's races. Nobody minds, but nobody likes being surprised.
• Cheer loudly. Half of the appeal for the competitors is the noise.

Why it matters more than it looks

Strip away the comedy and these afternoons are quietly efficient fundraising machines. A village hall roof, a defibrillator, a lifeboat, an air ambulance, a junior football kit — the money from a few hours of wellington throwing and nettle eating adds up to something genuinely useful, and it stays in the community that raised it.

They also do something less measurable. A fixed date in the calendar pulls people back to a place they might otherwise only visit at Christmas, and hands the next generation a tradition to be mildly baffled by and then fiercely proud of. Turn up to one of these events and you will find yourself, within an hour, checking next year's date.