Village Days
Now that June is on upon us and the weather is improving (ie no more bank holiday weather with luck), we are into the season of the village days. These village days are the way that money is raised for community projects. It could be for a new hall at one extreme, its maintenance or it could be just for local charities. It brings people into the villages and some people I know go from one to the other in June. The end of the season comes at about the time the schools break up for the summer holidays.
Most village days involve the local schools and clubs and a parade. In our village, the parade is in fancy dress and accompanied by music that continues throughout the day. The theme this year is the circus. A variety of stalls, nearly 50 in all, have to be there, almost by tradition, and our book stall will probably have a couple of thousand books on sale as they are collected all through the winter months. Wrapped around the one actual village day is a week of events, largely for the villagers like concerts and quiz nights. Some villages have guests to open their days but, in truth, they are no more than draws to try and attract visitors. So by that definition a village day is tourism. But tourism on a very local scale. It’s also tourism that often gets overlooked by tourist authorities. It might be mentioned on their websites in the list of events but that’s about it. Advertising is local, often just posters staple gunned to trees and the village notice board or the library if there is one. So visitors aren’t attracted from tens of miles around because they won’t be able to find out. And that’s a pity since most villages produce a great day out
Virtually every weekend in June we have a village day in our district and on some Saturdays, two or three.
You may have the same in your area. And if you want to let others know where they can go for a good day out, e-mail us at editor@cd-traveller.com and it will be listed in our events section.
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