World Black Pudding Throwing Championships in Ramsbottom

The age-old rivalry between Lancashire and Yorkshire is well documented, but one of its quirkier (and more recent) manifestations is the annual black pudding throwing championships, which takes place each September in the pretty Lancashire hill town of Ramsbottom. Rather more bizarrely than simply settling your scores with words or blows, black puddings, a Lancashire delicacy made with dried blood, are hurled at Yorkshire’s own culinary delight, the light and airy Sunday dinner staple of Yorkshire puddings. Each entrant has three tries to knock down as many Yorkshire puddings as possible, arranged in piles of 12 on a 30-foot-high plinth, by throwing their black pudding underarm from a specially built stand called the Ochre. If throwing sounds too strenuous, don’t worry: puddings of both the batter and bloody varieties will be on sale for eating purposes too. The World Black Pudding Championships came into being in the 1980s but, whatever the history – it’s said that the opposing sides of Yorkshire and Lancashire may have resorted to throwing food when their ammunition ran out during the Wars of the Roses – it’s sure to be a fun and tasty day.

Sun 9 Sep, World Black Pudding Throwing Championships, the Oaks and Bridge Street, Ramsbottom, BL0 9AD. Tel: 0161 253 5111, 12pm, £1 for three goes

Photo: Robert Wade