This was my first year at the Cambridge Beer Fest. I was designated driver (DD) so I couldn't…read moreparticipate in the drinking festivities as much as I wanted to. Upon entry it is £5.00. You then purchase your pint glass in which you can take home with you for £2.50. There is a warehouse full of beer vendors, such a huge selection, there is something there for everybody. The volunteers were very helpful and quick to serve you, it looks like fun being a volunteer because I think they may be allowed to drink for free, all of them were drinking. I tasted some of the best beer of my life there, had a nice 1/2 pint of 11%. There are tons of food vendors to help soak up the alcohol in your system when needed. Dogs are welcome. It was a really good atmosphere with lots of positive vibes flowing. Had a great time even as a DD.

Now in its 40th year, CAMRA's CBF is a great event. It runs for a week and is huge with lots of…read morebreweries featuring mostly British ales. You have to like said ales to get the most of this festival. Their IPAs, porters, stouts and lagers come from brewers all over the country but I find most British brewers stay within a narrow taste profile. No cascade hops here. There is a small foreign bar featuring Belgian and German offerings and one for mead. If you have the time you can volunteer to pull beers. You'll earn credits and learn quite a bit but do the lunch shift it's much easier than the evenings or weekends. The huge tented space keeps everyone dry, there are food vendors too. £4 entry.

WOW!!!! Just got back from our first visit to the Secret Garden Party. Better than Glasto probably…read morebecause the emphasis is on art AND music so there is lots to do. This time loads of good music plus circus skills, sock wrestling, hula hooping, explorers camp, dance, camera obscura, samba lessons, yoga, ferris wheel etc etc etc. Lots of eccentric costumes, very kid friendly. Fantastic atmosphere - very friendly and good natured. No flights, no trouble. Even the toilets were reasonable - much better than other festivals :-) In 2005, The Secret Garden Party won the Best Small Festival prize at the UK Festival Awards. It won the Best Small Festival prize for the second time in 2008. In 2007, it was named 'best British music festival' by Radio 1. We're booking for next year without a doubt :-)

People travel from all over to visit this great free festival. It's just a one -dayer but…read morenevertheless it's packed full of entertainment. Loads of different types of music including ska, reggae, rock, pop, and dance music. It's a superb atmosphere and very family orientated. There are lots of stalls to look around and the settings are very pleasent. It's certainly worth the drive from Sheffield to Cambridge for a lot of people I know so that should say something. It's just a shame that it can't be made into a 2 day festival and provide some kind of camp site but nevertheless it's great and it's free and there's tons of great pubs to visit in Cambridge afterwards!

I would highly recommend Vanya, I went for my first reading this evening and she made me feel…read moreextremely comfortable. A wonderfully kind and caring woman with an amazing gift. I left feeling informed and hopeful!

From the owner: Tarot Readings Clairvoyants…read more Group Readings Individual Readings Competitive Rates Hi my name is Vanya and I come from a family of working Psychics. I have been a Psychic Consultant now for 35 years and provide an accurate indepth reading using the tarot and my natural Clairvoyant abilities. I also use a crystal dowser for short yes and no answers if needed. I am new to living in Cambridge and offer 1 to 1 readings from my home. I am able to travel around Cambridgeshire as well as to other counties for Parties, Holistic Fayres, Festivals and Events. Please contact me for prices and availability.

Advertised (on their website) as Europe's biggest tribute and new acts festival, this is the best…read morefestival I have ever been too. Don't be put off by the tribute side of it, I know you can get some pretty bad tributes but at Glastonbudget they make an effort to get the best. I have to admit that I enjoyed watching the Dead hot chillis more than I enjoyed the real act (at Earls court) - they have so much energy, and you actually have a chance to get to the front of the audience. The new acts are also great, they get some great new acts and it is fab to have a chance to see so many! Value for money is fantastic - ticket prices at the moment are just less than £50 for the whole weekend including camping. Another thing the festival prides itself on is keeping food and drink prices reasonable, so prices are similar to those in a pub. They serve a selection of real ales and ciders which were very popular with the lads in our group. The only complaint I have is about the weather - it rained badly on the Sunday 2 years ago!! They did improve things a lot last year by adding two music tents, one in the camp field and one in the main arena, the rain wasn't too bad but at least they were prepared if it had been. This event is getting bigger year after year, I would highly recommend it (and have been to all my friends!!)

This is a well established winter ales festival, organised by the Cambridge and District Branch of…read morethe Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). As a winter ales festival, the emphasis is on the heavier, and generally darker (and stronger!) seasonal ales and winter warmers, although with around 120 beers on offer, the festival has plenty of other beer styles too, as well as ciders and foreign beers. I attended for the first time this year, and had a very enjoyable evening - once I got in. The qualification is important, as one of the main features of the venue is that, for a beer festival, it's relatively small. There are two downstairs bars, the very small 'Back Bar' and the slightly larger 'Front Bar', where food is also served, and the main bar area upstairs. Entry is free for CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) members. We arrived on the Friday at 7pm and had to queue for nearly an hour (that's dedication for you) in a biting cold wind as the venue was already full, and they could only let people in on a one-out, one-in basis. Unless they try for a larger venue next year, it's worth therefore getting there early: a friend of ours who arrived an hour earlier had no trouble queueing. Once we'd warmed up, though, and purchased our £4 commemorative glasses (this is refundable if you don't want to keep it at the end of the evening), the beer choice was very good. The emphasis - and I suppose about half the ales - are of the heavier winter seasonal variety, including stouts and porters. Some of these are pretty strong stuff: Bartram's 'Soviet Stout' comes in at 6.9% ABV, Cambridge Moonshine's 'Chocolate Orange Stout' comes in at 7.2%, Harwich Town's 'Sint Niklaas' at 7.8%, and Elveden's 'Harwich Charter Ale' at a whopping 10% ABV. Those trying the foreign beers have plenty of choice in the 8-10% range, with the Belgian Bush de Noël from Brasserie Dubuisson Frères brewery taking the ribbon with its staggering 12% ABV. (And you would be staggering, too, after one too many of those). Unsurprisingly, they only provide you with half-pint glasses. That all said, as with most beer festivals, people drink steadily and sensibly and the atmosphere is warm and friendly and very well behaved. There are plenty of beers in the 3.5-5% ABV range if you want something less alcoholic. Some of the beers have wonderful names: Bartram's 'Mother In Law's Tongue Tied', a rich tawny ale (9% ABV) must rate as one of the best, Elgood's 'Wenceslas Winter Warmer' (7.5% ABV) wins the prize for alliteration, Potbelly's 'Jingle Bellies' (5% ABV) for the most humorous, Son of Sid's 'Strapped Jock' (4% ABV) for the most ribald and Woodforde's 'Headcracker' (7% ABV) for honesty! Food is served until 9pm, although they carried on after this on our visit. The menu is pretty basic but filling festival fare: most popular, and best value, were the hearty and very fresh chips at £1.50, but there were also veggie chilli, game stew, fish and chips, various filled rolls and soup on offer. Apart from the queue, the other main downers are that it is very crowded, there's no cloakroom to leave coats etc, there's no level access and relatively little seating for the numbers present. These are all limitations of the venue, but worth knowing about before you go if they're important for you.

Not a patch on the spring festival…read more Most of the breweries are local with all that implies. Very few from outside Cambridgeshire are represented and those that are are good. Entrance is £3 but by 5pm on the last day with 4 hours to go, the list showed 1/3 of the beers had run out. Actually it looked like much more than that. By 6 pm it was less than 1 in 5 and one of the three bars closed. It seems the aim is to sell all the beer by closing time - in which case how can you justify charging an entrance fee? The best beers run out the quickest. Food is poor compared to the Spring festival. Essentially pork, sausages or burgers with rolls, mashed potatoes or chips and pricy. There are no salads, snacks - pork pies, pork scratchings crisps or anything else. Much better to go over to Fitzbillies for lunch Worth visiting when entrance is free but otherwise you'll find better beer at local pubs. With the entrance price I paid £6.20 per pint. Waste of money. Don't visit on the last day unless you're prepared to pay for entrance and a poor choice of beer.

Cropredy is a beautiful, tiny village near Banbury on the banks of the Cherwell. It is an old…read morevillage, dating from before the English civil war, and it looks it (in the quaint, lovely way, rather than the rundown way!) It has a thriving community, including a school, a church, pubs, a doctor's surgery, general store and other small business appropriate to an English village and a rather spiffing website (http://www.cropredyvillage.info/index.htm) . The website will tell you all about the history of the village (including the civil war battle fought here in 1644 and its mention in the Domesday Book), the age of the properties (from really quite old to not really very old at all), the amenities, and its location (the Cherwell valley, three miles north of Banbury and Junction 11 of the M40 Motorway). Do visit the website for loads of useful information. However, I'd like to give you my impressions. It is one of the friendliest places I have ever been. The local residents are of all ages, and welcome visitors with open arms (and, once a year, they get a rather large influx of visitors, but more on that in a minute). The church warden will gladly show visitors around, and discuss the new bells installed a couple of years ago. The residents will recount the age and history of their homes. There is a cricket club, which is quintessentially English. There are moorings on the river and canal for boats. This is a beautiful village, but you might well ask how I, an ex-pat American living in London has found herself there not once but three times. You might also wonder what I am talking about when I mention the annual influx of visitors. Each year, Cropredy plays host to Fairport Conventions annual...well....convention. This is a fabulous folk festival over a weekend in August. There are many, many things that make this different from other festivals - there is only one stage, for a start, the age range tends to be older, it's folk...but what makes this festival unique is that the village positively welcomes the up-to-30,000 visitors the village plays host to. The boy scouts are on litter duty. Local lads sell programmes. The pubs open for breakfast. The cricket club opens for showers. The residents mind the inconvenience (traffic, parking restrictions, smelly festival goers) not a whit. Fairport Convention allocate a ticket to each of the 750 residents to do with as they please. Everyone is happy. An idyllic English village indeed - and one well worth visiting even if you're not a folk music fan...