While all the current festival hype surrounds the Rolling Stones’ appearance at Glastonbury, there are a host of other quirky festivals around the world that might just pique your interest. Here’s a selection of the best:
Fish Festival with the world’s largest frying pan
Liguria, May 13
At the Camogli Fish Festival, freshly caught fish are cooked in the largest fish frying pan in the world at five metres wide with a seven metre handle. Fishermen abandon their day jobs for the festival and cook their fresh catch and it is then handed out for free. www.prolococamogli.it
Monterosso Lemon Festival
Liguria, May 19
Every year, the tiny Cinque Terre village of Monterosso dedicates a day to locally grown lemons with the Lemon Festival. The village is covered in thousands of lemons with lemon decorated shop windows, a contest for the largest lemon and locals and visitors competing for the best, er, lemon statues.
http://bit.ly/Yf9Lax
Wife Carrying World Championships
Finland, July 5-6
The Wife Carrying World Championships sees male competitors race each other while carrying a female team mate to whom, perhaps misleadingly, they do not have to be married. Teams have to navigate a 253 metre course, which includes obstacles such as a three-foot high log hurdle, a small pond called the “The Widow Maker” and a sand trap known as “Sand Mountain”.
www.eukonkanto.fi
17th MangoMania Tropical Fruit Fair
Cape Coral/Pine Island, Florida, July 13-14
Tropical fruit lovers will have their fill at the MangoMania festival, a celebration of all things mango on Pine Island on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Festival highlights include mango cook offs, mango pie eating competitions, mango juggling competitions and the mango longest throw competition.
www.mangomaniafl.com
World Eskimo Indian Olympics
Alaska, July 17-20
The World Eskimo-Indian Olympics makes London 2012 look very tame! The Olympics is held on the banks of the River Chena in Fairbanks and features games rooted in ancestral hunting and survival techniques employed by Native Americans, as well as dance and storytelling competitions.
www.weio.org
Swamp Soccer World Championship
Finland, July
Who needs the Champions League when you have the Swamp Soccer World Championships? The tournament is held in Hyrynsalmi in the East of Finland with competing teams playing to take each other on in the swamp. Brilliant as a spectator sport as almost 500 teams battle it out by wading through knee deep mud with the ball invisible for the majority of the time.
swamp.turnauspalvelu.fi
Torteval Scarecrow Festival
Guernsey, August 3-4
The weekend festival celebrates scarecrows of all shapes and sizes with nearly 100 of them scattered through the Torteval parish of Guernsey. Visitors can stroll through the rural lanes of the parish looking at the bizarre scarecrows along the way and enjoy a traditional Morris dance and tractor demonstration afterwards.
www.cwgsy.net/community/torteval.scarecrows/
American Sandsculpting Championships
Fort Myers Beach, November 21 – December 1
The making of enormous and highly impressive sandsculptures can be watched at the annual Sandsculpting Championships on Fort Myers Beach. Each year about 50,000 visitors watch experts from all over the world turn sand into spectacular art works using what is thought to be the world’s best sculpting sand, due to its high shell content. www.fmbsandsculpting.com/
