Tag: fitness

Sir Tony Robinson, Nigel Planer, T’Pau, and Timmy Mallett… and More at Frome Festival in July

Tickets are now on sale for Frome Festival’s silver anniversary year, taking place between the 3rd – 12th July, 2026. Three hundred events are scheduled in 58 venues in and around Frome during the 10-day community arts festival…..

Frome Festival’s programme offers music to suit all tastes – from classical, folk, pop, jazz and world music to hard rock, punk and techno. In a special programme, Frome-based Irish folk singer Cara Dillon will perform songs from across her acclaimed catalogue alongside Sam Lakeman, while also reflecting on the town they call home.

The Bob Morris Lecture is delivered this year by Sir Tony Robinson discussing his life and love of history. Other history talks during the festival include Three Remarkable Women by David Heath, The Bayeux Tapestry organised by Frome Society for Local Studies, and Emily Hauser reassesses the often-mythologised women of Ancient Greece in Mythica. Closer to home, Rosie Eliot will deliver Frome Festival President and Founder Martin Bax’s talk on Celebrating Frome Festival’s Origins with some enjoyable stories and memories to mark its 25th year. This is one of numerous free events, with booking advised.

There is a strong line-up of literary events, led predominantly by Frome Writers’ Collective who have relaunched Words at Frome Festival. Highlights include prizewinning novelist and biographer Nicholas Shakespeare discussing Spies & Lies at the Merlin Theatre. Another favourite literary event, The Crysse Morrison Prize for Poetry, will see winning poems presented alongside an open mic. Submissions for the poetry competition are open until the 14th June.

A special anniversary gala launch performance of the acclaimed musical King of Fools will open the festival at the Merlin on Thursday 2nd July. Written by former Frome Festival Director Martin Dimery, the production forms part of a wider fundraising initiative in support of the festival for its 25th anniversary.

Other highly anticipated plays featured in the festival are Frome Drama Club’s adaptation of Jean Genet’s The Maids and Really Truly Theatre’s Your Move. Dance lovers can enjoy a flamenco performance by celebrated dancer Maria Vega at the Merlin Theatre with Xuefei Yang on Spanish guitar. This is preceded by a flamenco workshop as a separate event.

Frome Festival offers an eclectic mix of hands-on workshops, from several literary and singing opportunities to Silver Jewellery Making, Carve a Green Man in stone, Softcover Bookbinding, Introduction to Bell Ringing, a Perfume Masterclass, Mongolian Overtone Voicing, Morris Dancing, Flamenco, West African and Afro Salsa dance workshops, Medieval Tile Making, a Tibetan Workshop with the Tashi Lhunpo Monks, a Mindful Photography Walk, Singing Bowl Workshops, and a Family Pond Dip for younger children. John Hegley is also running a creative workshop for “anyone who has been seven years old!”

The comedy headliners are Taskmaster favourite Phil Ellis presenting Bath Mat, and Nigel Planer, best known as Neil the hippie from The Young Ones. Timmy Mallett will also be sharing his love of cycling, painting and the landscapes of Britain and Ireland in his own inimitable way.

Art exhibitions have long been a cornerstone of the Frome Festival, with the Frome Open Art Trail showcasing the work of artists and makers in studios and shared venues throughout the town. Independently, the Pedestal Gallery will present ceramics by comedian Johnny Vegas alongside works by Peter Hayes and Emma Rodgers, following the show’s return from the Venice Biennale.

The Food Feast, another favourite free event, will be taking place on Saturday 4th July from 5pm. Visitors can expect great live music and entertainment alongside delicious international food, with many traders offering a low-price tasting menu for the first time this year.

Frome’s Hidden Gardens from Friday 10th to Sunday 12th July is also trying something new by extending the Friday opening hours to 7.30pm in the evening. Guests can discover beautiful spaces when the air is cooler before Frome Festival’s evening events.

With the sought after Frome Tunnels Tours on 7th July and various free events, walks, talks, quizzes, a Cacao Ceremony and Sound Bath, the return of the sensonic crew’s dance music night with cutting edge visuals under the name Synaesthesia, and a children’s Wildlife Parade heading through the town centre on Sunday 12th, audiences of all interests are catered for.

Frome Festival Director Adam Laughton shared, “As Frome Festival celebrates its 25th birthday this year, we’re delighted to see Frome’s remarkable arts scene reflected in events of all shapes and sizes. With 300 events, including 160 that are free and up to £5 per ticket, in 58 venues across the 10-day programme, there really is something for everyone.”  

BROCHURES detailing all events are available to pick up from the Cheese & Grain, local libraries, information points and many other locations across Frome and the surrounding area. An online version of the brochure is available here. Publicity photos can be found here.

Tickets are on sale now via www.fromefestival.co.uk and the Cheese & Grain box office.

FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS – NOT TO MISS!

King of Fools – GALA LAUNCH Thursday 2nd July / 7pm / Merlin Theatre

Celebrating Frome Festival’s Origins (Martin Bax’s talk presented by Rosie Eliot)

Afriquoi x BCUC

Kiki Dee & Carmelo Luggeri

The Monochrome Set

Food Feast

Kanekt in Concert

Frome Tunnels Tours

Haydn Jeugd Strijk Orkest

Tony Moore

Buena Bristol Social Club

Jackie Oates & Belinda O’Hooley

Heathen Apostles

Flamenco Dance Workshop and Xuefei Yang & Maria Vega performance

Spafford Campbell

T’Pau

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) with live organ improvisation

Timmy Mallett

Nicholas Shakespeare – Spies & Lies

Sam Sweeney & Grace Smith

Sea Shanties with the Hotwells Haulers

Silver Anniversary Concert – Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concert

Hidden Gardens of Frome

Cara Dillon & Sam Lakeman

Sura Susso & Amadou Diagne + workshops

Synaesthesia

The Wildlife Parade

Mells Summer Opera

Boubacar Samake & Aloka

Eliza Carthy’s Songs of Martin Carthy

Phil Ellis – Bath Mat

Tastebud Heaven on the Canal; Sunday Lunch at The Water Gypsy

If options for urbanites seeking experiential or themed dining experiences are boundless, they’re lesser so in our rural backwaters. Yet, we’ve returned from a delicious and most memorable Sunday lunch at The Water Gypsy, a working longboat pop-up licensed restaurant cruising the Kennet & Avon Canal; it’s the unique and enjoyable experience you really need to sample for yourself…..

In order to do so you can either check their website or social media for availability and mooring in your area, as they stop at various locations throughout the summer, autumn and Christmas season…. but chase them up and book you must! This spring season has started their third year, and its popularity is such it gets booked quickly. Until your lucky occasion, I can only try to express in words just how scrumptious and wonderful our experience of it was, and boy, it was!

Drawn to The Shed at Dulwich social experiment, where pranksters tricked TripAdvisor into ranking their shed #1 restaurant in London, to the “middle age” scene in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, where Idle and Jones play an American couple dining in a torture chamber, some quirky dining enterprises can be unnecessarily extreme, some exploit desire to discover unique dining experiences rather than conform to parochial restaurant culture. Howbeit, if seeking such experiences you must, The Water Gypsy presents a most honourable, comforting and hospitable repast; Polly and Hank run the show, balance cooking with being perfect hosts, and stop at nothing to ensure you’re fed in finest fettle.

Being they’re currently moored in Devizes, it was a short appetite-boosting walk along the towpath and we boarded this beautifully decorated and pristine boat, warmed by a log burner, welcomed affectionately and seated on the only communal table set for twelve guests. You could liken the reception, and the whole occasion, more to a dinner party than sitting alone in a restaurant.

Life on the canal may not always be the romantic setting of freedom preconceived, but The Water Gypsy hones on that idyllic image, glimpses into the fantastical.

Drinks are served, and you are not rushed here. It’s all finest ingredients, homemade and using local produce, which they proudly transform into tapas-style plates that celebrate sharing and connection. A grazing board, chockfull of dips and tapenade arrived, with pesto topped crostini, charcuterie skewers antipastisti with melon, avocado & prawns, Moroccan carrot puff pastry with orange and thyme syrup, and harissa tahini yoghurt, and, and, oh, look I’m no Jay Rayner, don’t even sport a goatee, I’m only now aware how my tastebuds will love me forevermore!

Pescatarian and vegan are catered for, but our main courses were beef estofado, a scrummy slow-cooked Peruvian stew, and delicately sliced hasselback potatoes, sticky pork glazed in garlic and ginger, with spicy Asian broccoli, and chicken tikka skewers with tomato salad….need I say more for clues to the way to my heart? Food heaven in gypsy ornamentation charm, canalside!

A perfectly baked brownie with strawberries and ice cream polished me off, though the other choice was a rather smashing looking cheese board, which Newsquest reporter Jamie opted for, and while tempted to nick his grapes, such was the hospitable atmosphere and such was the gorgeous food so beautifully presented, I thought I’d best behave!

Herein arrives the time when, in a typical restaurant, you’re encouraged to get your coat, but I’ve already observed a washtub and broomhandle propped up in the corner, and identified their owners; we’re in for some entertainment, and I couldn’t think of anyone more apt for the occasion.

Polly wants Sunday afternoons to have an additional live music finale, and while we’ve pondered some alternatives, boaters themselves, Nipper and Jellylegs Johnson drop in to tantalise us audibly the same way and with the same proficiency Polly has done with our palate. It’s a show you could never tire from, nor find fault with. The Devil’s Doorbell, cheeky, quirky duo passionately recreating jazz and blues roots with homemade instruments, skiffle, bucketloads of charisma and more double entendres than Finbar Saunders remaking the entire backlog of Carry-On films.

There was an encore singalong, and with conversation and wine flowing, the atmosphere was unlike anything you’d find at a restaurant. The Water Gypsy is, by very definition, the most pleasant and divine, not to mention scrummy, dining experience this side of Milliways, Douglas Adams’ Restaurant at the End of the Universe, only this one is a bit closer, just along the towpath!

Trending….

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.