Events
Live Your Life Newsletter - September 2005
Travel & Hostel Newsletter for Backpackers
Newsletters: September 2005 | All Archives
Wicked Events in September
With the summer slowly winding down and fall just beginning to show, Europe is still a hot bed of the weird, wonderful and down right memorable. Throwing food at other people, oil wrestling or playing sports in a tiny world, September is the last chance to get every ounce out of summer that you can!
Europe
La Tomatina: 31 August
Every year the 9000 inhabitants of the tiny village of Bunyol find their population has quadrupled overnight as a multitude of enthusiasts turn up for the largest tomato war on the planet. It's the opportunity of a lifetime - let battle commence! By 11am the 30,000-strong army are well breakfasted on pancetta, chorizo and lots of rosé and have been prepared for action by copious soakings. The tomato wars are about to begin. Five bulbous, tomato-packed rockets are sent whistling into the skies and the masses congregated below launch into a frenzy of flinging, slinging and lobbing - it's every man and woman for themselves. There are very few rules in La Tomatina - it is compulsory to squish your tomato before sending it into the red blur of the crowd before you, and other projectiles are not allowed. Don't worry about running out of ammunition because there's a monumental 125,000 kg’s arsenal of ripe fruit. Participants have two hours in which to hurl them at what will be, for that brief time, thousands of enemies.
Elmali Oil Festival: 2-4 September
Every year in September, the toughest Turkish boys take each other on at Elmali Oil Wrestling Festival, now over 600 years old. Elmali is a little mountain town 2000 metres above sea level in the Taurus Mountains, inland from the Turquoise Coast. The event takes place in the large stadium which is signposted on arrival in the town. Wrestlers come from all over Turkey in the hope of winning the title, in a form of competitive sport made popular back in Ottoman times. The contest lasts for three days and over 100 wrestlers participate.
British Open International Minigolf Tournament: 10-11 September
You can take crazy golf's answer to the British Open as seriously as you like. While many players enter just for fun, competition for the £500 top prize is always intense. The event is held at Stratford-upon-Avon Minigolf Course, one of England's finest. Set in attractive landscaped gardens, the course features Augusta-style sloping greens, as well as rocks, pipes and water hazards. Prospective players need to register in advance: the British Minigolf Association accepts entries on a first-come, first-served basis. Players travel from as far afield as Austria, Denmark and Germany to compete for the Open trophy and the right to call themselves British Open Champion.
The World Black Pudding Throwing Championship: 12 September
Several uses spring to mind when wondering what to do with a black pudding. Up in Lancashire there's a fashion for hurling them at a wall - during the Black Pudding Throwing Championships, held at the Royal Oak Public House in Ramsbottom.
As part of the tournament, the "Golden Grid" is transported from Bury town centre by the ELR steam train and carried up to Bridge Street with much pomp and ceremony, to be laid in the road next to the wall on which the Yorkshire puddings are mounted. With one foot on the grid, competitors (young and old) attempt to knock a pile of Yorkshire puddings from a wooden platform 20ft up the pub wall with three throws of the pudding. The winner is simply the person to dislodge the most Yorkshire puddings.
This historic tradition has been on the go for 150 years and attracts spectators and competitors from around the world. This year the championships combine with the Ramsbottom Farmers' Market to create an unmissable event.
It's thought that the contest is a revival of old clashes between the people of Lancashire and those from Yorkshire, during which Lancastrians hurled black puddings at their counterparts from the white pudding county of Yorkshire.
Anyone still in the dark, black pudding is a regional delicacy and a type of sausage consisting of congealed pigs' blood, fat and rusk, encased in a length of intestine. Yum!
London
The capital city is alight with great happenings this month, change your life at the Yoga show, change your Clothes at London fashion Week, and settle down for some great food and films during the Firecracker Showcase.
Firecracker Showcase: London's East Asian Film Festival: 8-18 September
Screening 40 knockout films - many of them UK Premieres - across a variety of London venues, Firecracker Showcase presents an eclectic programme from one of the most dynamic filmmaking regions in the world, taking in movies from China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, The Philippines, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
Screenings encompass everything from thrillers to biting satire, love stories to low-budget indies, glossy historical epics to films with a darker edge. On show are some of the most recent films from East Asia alongside undiscovered treasures from the recent and more distant past.
The Yoga Show: 16-18 September
Olympia's National Hall hosts the second edition of The Yoga Show, featuring ten workshop rooms, two meditation rooms and 200 stands, and calling all health-conscious people to take part in an exciting series of events.
Last year's show was inundated with over 11,000 visitors, ranging from beginners to professional teachers. There are children's classes, a large stage area and a plethora of presenters and teachers including Howard Napper (GMTV), Joshua Isaac Smith (Yoga Boxing), Michele Pernetta (Bikram Yoga) and Mira Mehta (The Yogic Path). Finally, many experts also display their skills at the Second European Yoga
London Fashion Week: 18-22 September
Organised by the British Fashion Council, this important biannual fashion event at the National History Museum in Kensington showcases spring/summer collections, drawing the glitterati of the fashion media and setting the tone for next year's styles.
Over 80 designers hold a series of catwalk shows in vast white marquees, especially erected on the lawns of the venue, with a mix of new designers taking to the stage, alongside their more established contemporaries. A hundred and fifty static stands showcase the best of British fashion, while there is a strong presence of overseas buyers, keen to snap up hot new styles for the forthcoming season.
Brighton
While it may not be beach weather out at the pier in Brighton there is still loads to do in this always happening town, great food, fast cars and Air Guitar?
Brighton & Hove Food and Drink Festival: 7-13 September
Feast your way around Brighton and Hove as the annual Food and Drink festival offers a huge variety of tastes and aromas in restaurants, bars and hotels. The main attractions are held on the weekend of 10th and 11th September at Brighton's Corn Exchange, and New Road. These include a festival banquet and a huge food and drink market, offering the best in Sussex produce and a taste of the signature dishes of top local restaurants.
National Speed Trials: 10 September
Arguably the oldest motoring competition in the UK, the Brighton Speed Trials are a feast for the eyes of any petrolhead. Cars and bikes of all shapes and sizes fill every inch of Madeira Drive, a short distance from Brighton Pier, from the oldest veterans to the newest of the Max Power Mob.
UK Air Guitar Championships: 25 September
Yes, the time is fast approaching. Flex those fingertips and dig deep into the wardrobe to find your spandex pants. This heat of the UK Air Guitar Championships is at Brighton's Concorde 2, preceding the final in London in October. The UK Air Guitar Championships is Slack Sabbath's monstrous Hair Metal Baby - not only a club night and annual event but a musical movement that has conquered the world, spawned a major motion picture, compilations, a thousand imitators, rivalries and retributions...
Bath
This month, the city of Bath embraces all things Austen, with its yearly Jane Austen festival. From the books, food, fashion and culture of the past you’ll be sent hundreds of year into the past and the world of Jane Austen
Jane Austen Festival: 17-25 September
Bath celebrates its annual Jane Austen Festival with costumed promenades, talks, readings, walking tours, theatrical performances, food events, quizzes and film screenings. The festival usually opens with a costumed promenade from The Jane Austen Centre to The Royal Crescent Hotel, free for those in costume. Other costume-related events include: Shopping in the time of Jane Austen; Undressing Mr Darcy, a show about the hidden world of men's Regency fashion; a Museum of Costume and Assembly Room Tour and Costume Photography at the Assembly Rooms.
Tours of the local area include: Jane Austen's Bath, visiting the places she frequented; Bath and the Sexes, which explores where the sexes were kept apart in the town; Northanger Abbey, exploring locations from both the novel and the film and Dyrham Park and Garden, a guided walk led by Dale Dennehy through ancient parkland and the remains of the 18th-century water garden. There also theatrical performances, readings and film screenings, as well as special audiences with some of the performers. The festival ends with afternoon tea at the Windsor Hotel and a performance by the Jane Austen Dancers.
Edinburgh
The biggest festival city in the world has one last hurrah before it hurries off to rest until the hogmanay celebrations in December. Edinburgh sees off its visitors in style with the international festival’s closing fireworks concert.
Edinburgh International Festival Closing Firework Concert: 4 September
A long-standing final fling to the Edinburgh International Festival is a stunning firework display, accompanied by live music and presented by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Only those with tickets for Princes Street Bandstand get to hear the music at close hand, otherwise the piped soundtrack to the gardens is often completely drowned out by the sheer noise of the pyrotechnics.
The live music in 2005 is conducted by Garry Walker, and there is just one work - the one which Wagner thought was "the apotheosis of the dance," Beethoven's Seventh Symphony in A Op 92. Many people view the stunning display from Princes Street itself, but it can be seen across the city, so high points - like Carlton Hill - offer their own views. Even lower down can be good including Belushi’s bar on Market street.
Newsletters: September 2005 | All Archives
