I HAVE FINALLY FOUND MY KIND OF RAVE

Abergavenny is dancing at 9am

There was a time when going raving meant getting home at approximately the same time I now consider a perfectly respectable hour to start doing laundry.

Life moves on.

The Awake Collective is bringing its second morning rave to Kahve on Lewis Lane in Abergavenny this Sunday, with DJs, dancing and coffee from 9am until 11am.

No booze. No staying out until four. No losing the entire following day to existential dread and beige food.

You simply dance like it’s 2am, drink coffee and then emerge into Abergavenny with the frankly outrageous knowledge that you still have an entire Sunday ahead of you.

The idea came from local friends DJ Baby K8 and Naby, Nabila Fowles-Gutierrez, who wanted to recreate the connection and release of a proper dancefloor without everything else that tends to come attached to it. Their first Abergavenny morning rave only happened a few weeks ago and filled the room before most sensible people had finished breakfast.

I love this sort of thing, especially as music loving single mum with limited time on my hands.

There are plenty of us who still want music, dancing, interesting food, new places and actual LIFE after having children / getting older / realising three glasses of wine now require a formal recovery programme.

We haven’t become boring. We just quite like Sunday as well.

And because it happens during Abergavenny Food Festival, when it finishes you can walk straight out and begin eating.

Possibly the most millennial-friendly day out ever devised.

Sunday 20 September | 9–11am | Kahve, Lewis Lane, Abergavenny | Free, registration required

COME HUNGRY. AGAIN.

Abergavenny Food Festival takes over town

Yes, we have only just recovered from Ludlow.

No, I am not suggesting a sensible weekend at home.

Abergavenny Food Festival arrives this Saturday and Sunday with more than 120 food producers, 80-plus demos and events and live music spread across town, and this is exactly what I mean when I keep banging on about food festivals needing to be more than a procession of stalls selling chutney.

Abergavenny began in 1999, when local farmers Chris Wardle and Martin Orbach watched public confidence in British food collapse following the BSE crisis and decided to do something about it.

That first festival had just 39 producers in the Market Hall. The point was to put people making and growing food directly in front of the people eating it, and start a proper conversation about where food comes from. Twenty-eight festivals later, that idea is still sitting underneath the whole thing.

This matters to me.

We live in an area absolutely stuffed with farming, orchards, livestock, brilliant independent producers, ancient market towns and people doing clever things with what grows here. There is no excuse for food festivals in this part of the world to feel interchangeable.

Abergavenny has gone hard on the experiences.

You can head up the Blorenge with Fell Foodie Harrison Ward, guided by Longtown Mountain Rescue, then stop on the mountain while he cooks lunch outdoors. There are foraging walks, cooking over fire, talks about food and farming, Welsh whisky, cheese tastings and enough demos to lose a whole day in.

For small people, there’s a proper Kids’ Cookery School making Welsh cakes. It runs across both days, includes a Welsh-language session on Saturday and a quieter session on Sunday for children who might need a little more support. Under-16s get into the main festival free.

Then on Saturday night, the market shuts and Abergavenny Castle turns into a party.

There are Bhangra drummers, Brazilian music, Welsh bluegrass, Western Swing, food, fire poi and dancing inside the castle grounds until 11pm.

Saturday 19 & Sunday 20 September | Across Abergavenny | Day tickets £17, weekend £26 | Under-16s free

SEE THE FULL FESTIVAL PROGRAMME

BOOK FESTIVAL TICKETS

UPTON HAS GONE FULL COWBOY

A brand-new country festival has appeared beside the Severn

A small riverside town. Eight pubs and bars. Line dancing in the street. A bucking bronco.

Somebody has also booked Jessie from Toy Story and Cowgirl Barbie.

Upton upon Severn Country Music Festival launches for the very first time this weekend, spreading live music across town from Friday night until Sunday.

And it’s free.

There are country bands and singers playing at The Crown, The Star, The Anchor, Bar 7, The Boathouse, The Wheelhouse and various other bits of Upton, alongside Dolly Parton and Shania Twain tributes and outdoor line-dancing sessions.

My personal favourite detail is “beers and hymns with a country flavour” beside the river at 5pm on Saturday, which sounds so geographically specific I almost want it protected by UNESCO.

Upton feels particularly well suited to this sort of festival because it isn’t being dropped into a fenced field on the edge of somewhere.

The town becomes the venue.

You wander between pubs. You eat by the river. Someone in cowboy boots passes you in the street. You accidentally find yourself line dancing outside a bar.

That is infinitely more interesting to me than spending eight hours trapped inside Event Infrastructure™.

And while this is the first country weekend, Upton already knows how to let music spill through the town. This feels like another reason to make a weekend of the place rather than just turning up for a headline act and leaving.

Friday 18–Sunday 20 September | Upton upon Severn | Free

SEE THE FULL UPTON COUNTRY PROGRAMME

GOOD BOYS. BAD TECHNO.

Two poodles are playing a rave in Shrewsbury

I spend a lot of time searching events listings. Most of them contain approximately the same twelve things.

Then, occasionally, I find two brothers dressed as poodles playing live techno while driving a battery-powered Dog Trolley through the audience.

This is why MAM exists.

DOGSHOW arrive at LOOP in Shrewsbury on Saturday with drums, analogue synths, rave music and an increasingly elaborate commitment to being dogs.

Brothers Sam and Laurie Crombie have already taken the show to places including Glastonbury, Boomtown, Shambala and Camp Bestival, and released their debut album Coming Out Canine last year.

Their own description is basically Crufts on a trip to space, which seems fair. The support is equally reassuringly odd. There’s The Junkoactive Wasteman, plus Def Neon and Fukushima Dolphin, before DOGSHOW hit the stage around 9.15pm and an afterparty takes over afterwards.

I also really like LOOP. It’s an independent 250-capacity venue opposite Shrewsbury station, created by the people behind LOOPFEST, with a deliberate focus on original live music, emerging acts and grassroots culture. Places like this matter. They give towns actual cultural ecosystems rather than a calendar made entirely from touring tribute bands.

Also: poodles.

Saturday 19 September | From 5pm | LOOP, Castle Foregate, Shrewsbury | Around £17

GET DOG SHOW TICKETS

NOBODY PUTS LUDLOW CASTLE IN A CORNER

Outdoor cinema is back in the castle

After spending last weekend full of fire, food and several thousand hungry people, Ludlow Castle is wasting very little time becoming something else entirely.

Adventure Cinema moves in from Friday to Sunday.

Friday is Dirty Dancing. Saturday is a full Mamma Mia! ExtrABBAganza, which involves the film plus singing, dancing and an amount of ABBA I consider medically appropriate.

Sunday slows things down with Andrea Bocelli 30: The Celebration on the big outdoor screen. I’m always here for ancient places being properly used.

Ludlow Castle has spent roughly nine centuries reinventing itself. It was built as part of the Norman attempt to control this unruly borderland, became home to Prince Edward before he disappeared into history as one of the Princes in the Tower, housed Arthur Tudor and Catherine of Aragon and later became the administrative centre of the Council of the Marches.

For more than a century, Ludlow effectively operated as the governmental centre for Wales and the border counties. It can probably cope with Pierce Brosnan singing SOS.

Bring blankets. Bring chairs. Bring a picnic. Accept that it is September in Shropshire and dress accordingly.

Friday 18 September: Dirty Dancing
Saturday 19 September: Mamma Mia! ExtrABBAganza
Sunday 20 September: Andrea Bocelli 30
Ludlow Castle

BOOK LUDLOW OUTDOOR CINEMA

THE NICE PILE

Slipmatt is playing The Thirst Trap in Hereford on Saturday for the venue’s second birthday, with the old-school rave DJ going from a career that includes SL2 and the Dreamscape era to a tiny Hereford club. It runs from 2pm until 2am, which gives Awake Collective attendees a useful illustration of the alternative life path.
SLIPMATT TICKETS

A fossil hunter is bringing sea dragons to Hay Castle on Saturday. Matthew Myerscough talks ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and the spectacular things he has pulled out of the Welsh coast, and every ticket holder gets a fossil to take home. Recommended 12+. 2pm, £15 adults / £10 under-18s.
BOOK FOSSIL HUNTING AT HAY CASTLE

Brockhampton is going full harvest weekend, with its old orchards open for apple and damson picking, traditional apple pressing, a Kids’ Kitchen and historical harvest demonstrations in the manor kitchen. Saturday and Sunday, 10.30am–4pm. Event included with normal admission.
BROCKHAMPTON HARVEST WEEKEND

You can spend Saturday reading into the women who shaped Hereford Cathedral, from benefactor Lady Joanna de Bohun to Anne Denton, on a 75-minute specialist tour. The Cathedral Library and Reading Room is also open free from 10am–2pm for Heritage Open Days. Women in the Cathedral tour: 1.30pm, adults £10.
BOOK THE CATHEDRAL TOUR

If your child considers a loud engine the highest form of culture, Shelsley Walsh is having a very good Saturday. Chill on the Hill lets road cars run the famous hill climb at the self-described oldest motorsport venue in the world. Driver places have sold out, but spectators can still go for £10 and under-16s are free.
CHILL ON THE HILL DETAILS

The Globe at Hay gets properly experimental on Saturday night as NAWR brings Celyn of Gwent, The Death of Money and Carausias Arise for electronic music, live voice, audiovisual performance and sounds considerably further out than your standard Saturday-night covers set. Saturday 19 September, 7.30pm.
SEE WHAT'S ON AT THE GLOBE

Brecon has an excellent free one for smaller music fans on Saturday afternoon. Brecon Town Concert Band is playing Disney favourites and Peter and the Wolf, then inviting children onto the stage to make some noise themselves. 2pm at Theatr Brycheiniog. Free, but booking essential.
BOOK THE FREE CHILDREN'S CONCERT

Suckley Festival takes over the church and surrounding area from 3–10pm on Saturday, with live music, food, children’s stuff and the excellent local Hop Shed shifting its bar over for the day. Village festival, good beer, everyone stays until dark. Lovely.
SUCKLEY FESTIVAL DETAILS

That’s your lot guys!

Go dance at breakfast. Eat something cooked over fire. Put a child in front of a medieval archer. Watch two poodles make techno.

And if somebody you know is still finding out about all the good stuff on Monday morning, forward them this email and tell them to sign up.

Marches & More lands every Thursday with the things actually worth leaving the house for across the Welsh Marches.

See you next week.

Sarah x