The best UK festivals and events: July 2019

Looking for food festivals to visit in July? Here’s our round-up of the best food festivals taking place this month, from a Midsummer feast to seafood festivals. Check out all of July’s foodie events, here…

Hampshire Food Festival

More a call to arms than a festival, Hampshire’s annual food festival celebrates local producers and food businesses with a whole month of culinary activities. Over 100 events will take place over the 31 days including vineyard visits with Grape & Grain tours, mastering the art of BBQ cookery at SEASON cookery school and learning how to make cider the traditional way.

1 – 31 July, hampshirefare.co.uk

Timber Festival

The National Forest Company and Wild Rumpus have joined forces to create Timber Festival, a three-day event that looks to explore what woodlands can mean to us. Live music, spoken word workshops and storytelling will all take place as well and guided runs and the chance to relax in an eco-spa.

The Common will be a place to feast and forage, with street-food stalls, bars and workshops. Perfectly Edible UK will be cooking ‘Binner’, a 2-course meal made entirely out of food that would have otherwise gone to landfill, while Seedlip will be teaching you how to make your own shrub.

5 – 7 July, timberfestival.org.uk

Henley Festival

Taking place over five days in the middle of July, Henley Festival brings together practitioners of music, art and food in the waterside Oxfordshire town.

The Riverside Restaurant with Angela Hartnett at its helm will be serving leek and goat’s cheese tortelli, braised beef cheek and Amalfi lemon tart with a pine nut crust, while street food vendors will include the Halloumi Guys dishing up yogurt-topped deep-fried halloumi sticks, and the Gamekeeper flipping venison burgers.

There’ll be plenty of bars, with Black Cab Coffee Co. mixing espresso martinis from its London taxi.

10 – 14 July, henley-festival.co.uk

Movable Midsummer Feast

Bristol-based Feast with a Chef is best known for its village hall feasts, the chance to eat food cooked by big-name chefs in a more relaxed, intimate setting. This month, however, it’s running something altogether different: a movable feast set on a steam train. Guests will be seated in the vintage dining cars of the Avon Valley Railway’s steam train, based in Bitton near Bath. Then, as the train chuffs through the Somerset countryside, they’ll be treated to a gourmet four-course seasonal feast cooked by Ben Gibbons, head chef at St Anne’s College, Oxford. A movable bar will sell wines carefully selected to match the menu and tickets cost £60pp.

13 July, feastwithachef.co.uk

Pommery Dorset Seafood Festival

Dorset Seafood Festival is celebrating its 11th year in style, with champagne and seafood. Enjoy a glass of fizz overlooking Weymouth’s picturesque harbour then browse the festival’s 100 or so stalls to find your pick of the best seafood street food dishes.

Head to the Pavilion stage to see chef Neil Rankin and Sophie Mitchell in action. Every day there will also be BBQ masterclasses where you can learn how to cook fish burgers, seafood skewer tacos and dry spiced grilled fish over open flames. All profit will go to the Fisherman’s Mission charity.

13 – 14 July, dorsetseafood.co.uk

Check out the best places to eat and drink in Dorset here…

Here are some of the best places to eat and drink in Dorset including:

• Brassica, Beaminster

• Red Panda, Lyme Regis

• Dorshi, Bridport

• The Anchor Inn, Seatown

• Deans Court, Wimborne

Latitude Festival

A line-up of live music, lake swimming, late night DJs and street feasts mean this year’s Latitude Festival should definitely be on your radar.

Street food stalls will set up home in Henham Park, Suffolk; think fried chicken from Only Jerkin, samosa chaat from Chai Thali and bacon cheese burgers from Original Patty Men. The Theatre of Food will see the likes of Georgina Hayden and Felicity Cloake cooking up a feast and talking all things edible.

18 – 21 July, latitudefestival.com

Farmfest

Mixing music with comedy and contemplation, Farmfest returns to the rolling hills of Somerset for three days this July. Along with the annual hat competition (there’s six categories to enter into, from Love the Land to Wild and Wonderful), there’ll be food and drink stalls to keep you fuelled. Local brewery Wild Beer Co. are bringing their fleet of mobile bars, so expect to try intriguing brews, from Tepache with pineapple and spice notes to the sour Zintuki.

25 – 27th July, farmfestival.co.uk

Port Eliot Festival

If you love reading about food as much as eating about it this cult Cornish festival is firmly based around literature but has now diversified to encompass much more than books. Not least where food is concerned. A selection of street food chefs will be setting up stalls on the lawn (choose between za’atar, minced lamb and olive oil-topped flatbreads, vegan sushi from Happy Maki and salt and pepper squid from Elseafood). There will also be live demonstrations from James Whetlor, Olia Hercules and Russell Norman, as well as a series of wood fired suppers hosted by Ben Quinn and his team.

Between meals, there will be outdoor adventures to take part in and live music to listen to.

25 – 28 July, porteliotfestival.com