Gather ye round, all ye folktale-lovers, and hear the terribly interesting tale of your favourite comedy-historian-cum-folklorist’s summer holidays! Okay, so there was no grand British tour of Wales 2024 or Scotland 2025, but we’ve squeezed a few new sites into our travels this year!

We could easily crowbar in our June journey to Stratford-on-Avon, Macbeth and King Leir being only two familiar Shakespeare characters who are in our book, but there’s far bigger HUGELY EXCITING news connected to that pilgrimage on the verge of being announced…

So we were camping out east on the Norfolk/Suffolk border – which meant, of course, we had to investigate the Black Shuck legends at Bungay and Blythburgh… Not that there’s a huge amount to go on besides a few black marks on a church door, but the experience of walking the streets of Bungay will inspire me to go back and make our version of ‘BLACK SHUCK’ that bit more true to the real town… it also made me wonder whether I’ve been wrong to not include anything on Dick Turpin in Tales of Britain – okay, so he was just another nasty piece of work, but perhaps I can write a tale that examines the subject of turning criminals into heroes…?

While in the area, I also took time to visit the church so kindly funded by The Pedlar of Swaffham, and took a walk through Wayland Woods, the site of ‘Babes In The Wood‘. I thought Birnam Wood’s celebration fo its folkloric and literary heritage was weak, but at least they had a sign! Admittedly, I never walked every path through Wayland, but couldn’t find a single attempt to mark the site s in any way significant for visitors, which was a real disappointment. Someone let us know if we missed a monument to those two poor kids!

We also spent the day at Sutton Hoo, which I tenuously include under the banner of ‘Beowulf’, but to be honest, we had a lot more fun visiting the Dad’s Army museum in Thetford, which has at least the same historical value, and much more amusing pencils.

There was a great deal less to see of value to Tales of Britain down in Dorset, our next getaway locale, but I did at least manage to check out Batcombe, the village where Conjuring Minterne rode his flaming-hooved horse.

It was definitely the right place, but as ever, there wasn’t a single identifier of the folklore on display anywhere, and I couldn’t be sure if the historical Minterne, said to be buried half in and half out of the church, was evidenced by any of the architecture – plus, as is disgustingly usual these days, the whole place was locked up, so there wasn’t a lot we could do to make the most of our visit…

… So we just zoomed up the road to this big daft exhibitionist, who crops up in our version of Jack The Giant Killer!

But these holiday pilgrimages were all just the build up for me to a whole new form of live folklore event, as suggested by the mutation of the dear old Ludlow Fringe Festival into the brand new Ludlow History Festival! As a native Ludlovian and busy historian, it would have been unthinkable not to be a part of the first ever programme, and so I chose two of several subjects I could have covered – as the poster shows…

Both shows, I’m very glad to say for once, were completely sold out! Blackadder’s Britain was a blast, despite nearly losing my voice by the end, but performing sans green cape to deliver The Folklore of British History was a particular thrill – not just in that it went down very well, and I sold a few copies of both ‘Tales’ and ‘Histories of Britain’, but just as I was setting up, the excellent Stanton of Castle Bookshop casually whispered “Just so you don’t freak out, we have two seats reserved by Robert Plant!”

And in he strode, far too casually and off-duty for photo-taking to be a possibility – imagine if I could have got him to hold up a book and pose!? – but at least he stayed to the very end before melting away into the crowds. It wasn’t necessarily that surprising as he’s as-good-as Lord of the Manor in South Shropshire, used to visit Ludlow all the time as a boy, and is of course a folklore obsessive – but had I been a Led Zep fanboy in any way comparable to my Beatle discipledom, I’m not sure I’d have been able to get through the show!

I suppose I can’t expect anything similar to happen at the next Tales of Britain show, and perhaps one of Tears For Fears showing up wouldn’t have quite the same thrill, but there will be a special show in Bath to celebrate tyhe relaunch of the Bath Folk Festival next month – and the Ludlow Castle Bookshop have invited me back to close the year with a fresh seasonal special as well!

So, rock gods and just normal folkies, are all very welcome!

Happy autumn!