This year we will be heading to Okehampton for Samhain!

Beginning at 10:30 am at The Museum of Dartmoor Life, we’ll dance a few spots before having lunch at 1 pm-ish.

At around 3:30 pm we will cram the Beltane riff-raff into circus vehicles and head to The Tors Inn, Belstone, for a Samhain ceremony and fire dancing.

Check out the programme below and expect all kinds of spooky Morris-y shenanigans to take place!

Bonus points for coming with spooky Dartmoor-inspired costumes and fairy lights!

Don’t miss this glorious Dartmoor fair with everything you could want - food, drink, stalls, local crafts, dog trials, livestock and stuff, and black-clad Dartmoor creatures emerging out of the rocks and lichen to dance and shriek at you and then disappear again. All the good things.

Performance times:

5:30 - 6pm

8:30 - 9pm

More info

Worra wonderful spot this is, let’s hope the weather holds out for a hearty warm up for the long weekend!

We love being us. We get to dance to the darkest dirtiest trad music, hang out with amazing morris sides, and we get to do it at The Rugglestone Inn, one of the best pubs on the moor, and definitely the one with the most ducks. I know I'm coming for dinner first so if you want the deep fried cheese wedges you'd better come early.

Hosted by Lyme Morris, this seafront shindig with its panoramic views over the Jurassic Coast has all the makings of an amazing day out!

An unusual Friday evening gig for us - come and revel in the revelry at the annual Lapford Revel with them Myths & Legends. We’ll be performing between the pub Old Malt Scoop Inn and the village hall (road closure applies).

How lucky are we?! We get to play at our absolute favouritest pubs this season, including this gem at the top of town in Totnes. Usually welcoming us in after our exertions on St George’s day, they are kindly giving us corvids a nest for an evening of dance, song and libations. That being said, we may well be dancing in town somewhere first as we need a bit of space to spread our wings, and we are of course massive posers and thrive on adulation. So come and adulate us! Keep an eye on our facebook as we’ll update on there where we’re dancing and there will inevitably be a change of plan at around 7.49pm. Also the Pizza Pirates will be there selling delicious fresh pizza!

See you there!!

This pub is positively made for Morris - just look at all that lovely space. We’ll be joined by the epic Cogs and Wheels - so get down there quicksmart to bag your seat!

We love The Beer Engine and we’re stoked to be dancing here with Shumba African Drums! If that sounds like your cup of char, you'd better be at the Beer Engine on this particular Thursday.

The lack of whimsy in the title for this particular evening spectacle is extremely intentional! At least a few of us Beltaners (including yours truly) has turned up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to A Church House Inn in the greater Devon area, only to be flummoxed at the lack of their corvid brethren making a menace of themselves. And especially as the Church House Inn at Stokeinteignhead is such a lovely pub, you really don’t want to not be there! Come and see us dance over a drink and dinner, and we’ll see you in the pub afterwards.

We’re delighted to be invited by the wonderful Two Bridges Hotel to come and dance on their most resplendent of forecourts again this May. An absolutely magical spot in the middle of the best bit of the moor. Come and join us for a drink, a dance (actually please don’t dance - that’s our job... well, not exactly a job, more of a habit, really), and a singsong.

We’ll be joined on this hopefully sunny evening by Dartmoor Border Morris

We love a bit of Grimspound, so of course we’re going to be joining them for a knees up at their 30th birthday! Though if you ask us, they don’t look a day over 21

Beltane do Beltain in style!

Off we trot to Hampshire to welcome in the summer with live folk music, reenactor battles, local craftsfolk, and the burning of a 40ft wickerman.

Tickets and more info

Beltane at Beltane, the one and only. We will be here before sunrise to make sure it does, indeed, rise. You’re welcome.

Come and join us at the car park immediately below Hay Tor. You won’t miss us.

We’re thrilled to be part of the Green Man festival in Bovey Tracey this year. Traditional music, dance and folk stuff throughout town, and of course the making and unveiling of the Green Man. Come and watch us perform alongside other dance and music sides and groups.

Beltane Border will be dancing the Stoke Gabriel Wassail!
TIMES TBC (possibly 5.15pm and 7pm).

Stoke Gabriel with its apple orchards takes part in an ancient Wassail and mid-winter folk community festival. There will be singing and gun fire, offerings to the Spirit of the Trees and music, food and a lantern parade. And of course MORRIS..... that's where we come in! Loudly.

The festivities take place in the surroundings of Church Walk in the heart of the village and the Wassailceremony will take place in the community orchard.

Tickets: 4 GBP.
Friends of Stoke Gabriel School (FOSS), a charity, organises event with a BBQ. Local food and drink suppliers will be providing refreshments including Hunts Cider.

Saturday January 13th, we will be celebrating and leading the Lustleigh wassail. There will be cider; kids being forced into trees; perfectly good toasted bread stuck on branches; wassailing words; probably a lot of noise; singing and maybe even CAKE!

Join us outside The Cleave Inn at 7:45 for our performance and then into the orchard for the blessing of the apple trees.

If you can't be at this Wassail, then you get another chance to see us perform as we will also be at the Stoke Gabriel Wassail on Sat. 20th January. Times TBC.

TIME TBC - Check back in here closer to the day!

Yes, it will be freezing. Our dancers’ legs will be seizing up in the delightfully predictable damp Devon winter cold. Our musicians’ strings and drum skins will be doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things in the frost and the hail. And yes, you’ll have just paid a reassuring £6 for a plastic cup of pre-mixed mulled “wine”, and have started to question some of your life choices.

….But then we’ll start to dance, and it will all make sense.

This is what the pagan/Christian/commercial hybrid monster that we call Christmas is all about. This is why you sat in Totnes traffic for an hour and then tried to park for another hour. You know I’m right. Just come.

(PS one year a nice man told us after watching us dance here that he had thought that morris dancing was naff until he saw us. If that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will).

Beltane has danced the dark Morris at the Dark Gathering many times, and here we are again. The Dark Gathering at Boscastle is a truly one of a kind event. On or close to Samhain or All Hallow’s eve, we dance and sing at the time that the veil between worlds as it its flimsiest.

This event became so popular over the years that crowd control has had to be introduced. If you wish to attend, please find the Dark Gathering website or facebook page for information, as it is likely that tickets will need to be purchased in advance - not from us - from the event organisers.

It’s a special occasion, and after a day of dance and song, there’s usually a great session in the pub afterwards; if they’ll have us, that is!

Please note - this year it takes place in Tintagel, NOT in Boscastle.

https://propercornwall.co.uk/events/the-dark-gathering-2023-all-hallows-in-tintagel/

https://thedarkgathering.co.uk/

For some inexplicable reason we hadn’t danced at Widecombe Fair until last year. And now we have, there’s no turning back. We love it, come rain or shine, and this year we will be back in force. Don’t miss this glorious Dartmoor fair with everything you could want - food, drink, stalls, local crafts, dog trials, livestock and stuff, and black-clad Dartmoor creatures emerging out of the rocks and lichen to dance and shriek at you and then disappear again. All the good things.

Times TBC!!

Your Beltane Blogger is uninspired at this moment in time to find a wry play-on-words to title this event. And why should they? Such an event should speak for itself. There’s a shanty festival going on in Teignmouth and we are privileged to accompany the occasion with some ferocious yet moving dance performances. And then we will probably all sing, thereby nicely complementing the overall shanty theme. Teignmouth, shanties, Beltane, what’s not to love. See you there.

PS we have currently no idea when or where we are playing, but will update closer to the time on Facebook x

PPS We’ve updated this now so that we are ONLY dancing on Saturday 9th.
>> NOT DANCING on Sunday 10th!!!

Lovely lovely Lighter, we meet again. A generous bit of tarmac bounded conveniently by a sheer drop into water on two sides and a fantastic pub on another, allowing our spectators to choose either to go for a drink or jump into the drink. Which will you choose? Come and see us in August and let’s find out!

Things Happen Here (formerly the New Lion Brewery) in Dartington serve some of the most delicious ales this fine county (and much further beyond) has to offer, and Beltane have partaken of more than a few (thousand) pints in their time, so now we are coming straight to the source. Come for some bold dancing and even bolder dancing at this fantastic community space.

We will be joined by the wonderful Newton Bushel.

We love a community pub, and the Cornwood Inn's community has excelled itself in this regard, saving a beloved Dartmoor pub from a sad fate. So we will be here to celebrate this amazing effort, and raise some high spirits for the unwitting residents of Cornwood! Come and join us and we'll guarantee you a great evening (small print.. not actually in a financial sense!).

It's been too long since we've come to the lovely Chagford, so here we come to summon some Dartmoor spirits, delight/intimidate the crowds and generally get in the way. Plenty of room for everyone, a fantastic pub to escape into and enough tea and scones available in town to satisfy the mother-in-law, so bring her along too.