low food miles – The Extra Mile

Posted on 20/11/202420/11/2024 by The Extra Mile

BEST FOOD FESTIVALS FOR 2025

(c) eat:Festivals. People browsing local food stall at an eat:festival

THE BEST FOOD FESTIVALS FOR 2025

This blog brings together some of our favourite national and regional food festivals, so that you don’t miss a culinary trick in 2025 when looking for something to do with your foodie friends. Thank you to the organisers of the South West’s multi-award-winning food and drink festival series, eat:Festivals, for the use of their evocative, appetite-whetting imagery, above.

Our guidebooks (The Extra Mile: Delicious Alternatives to Motorway Services; The Farm Shop Guide; and The Coastal Café Guide) have one thing in common with these festivals. Our books encourage people to eat local, buy local, avoid boring big-brand food and the monotony of motorway eats, and instead to support smaller, independent producers. You’ll find many of these festivals featured in our newest book (already a #1 Amazon bestseller), The Farm Shop Guide.

Have we missed any festivals? Let us know, we’ll slip them in.

FOOD FESTIVALS IN/ FROM APRIL 2025

eat:Festivals…Year-round events in 2025 (from 5 April until 13 Dec)

eat:Festivals need a whole website of their own, there is so much going on. With local, regional events plus festive and themed markets (think vegan, Christmas, gate-to-plate), their impressive series of day-long markets begin with eat:Bideford on Sat 5 April 2025. They then continue (through Minehead, Weston-super-Mare, Castle Cary, Nailsea, Exmouth, Tavistock, Taunton, Bedminster, Burnham, Portishead, Axminster, Yeovil, Chipping Sodbury Shaftesbury, Honiton, Totnes, Wellington, Tiverton, and Clevedon) until Sat 13 December 2025, drawing a year of South West food festivals to a close with eat:Dawlish. Come along for everything from cider, organic veggies and smoked fish to chocolate, gelato and local spirits. Street performers and sustainability are high on the list of must-haves for every eat:Festival.

Book or attend your next eat:Festival here.

FOOD FESTIVALS IN MAY 2025

Porthleven Food Festival, Cornwall, 2-4 May 2025

Designed as a toast to Cornish food (while raising awareness of the key issues relating to food and the environment), this event takes over the whole town in a weekend of pasties, chef demos, Bloody Marys, ska bands, and comedy skits. It’s a riot.

Visit the Porthleven Food Festival in Cornwall.

Ludlow Food Festival, Shropshire, 9-11 May 2025

The spring chapter of this famed foodie event (set against the Marches’ iconic castle) has bands, beer, music, and motors. Although more beer-focused than the autumn edition, you’ll find a wealth of artisan food producers ready to show off the region’s best street food. A fab food festival in Shropshire.

Follow Ludlow’s Spring Food Festival, Shropshire

Follow Ludlow’s main Food Festival (12-14 Sep 2025)

North Leeds Food Festival, West Yorkshire, May 10-11 2025

A popular menu of tribute bands, street entertainers, artisan traders, indy bars, and delicious street food make this a popular addition to any self-respecting foodie’s calendar. Kids love the fun fair and inflatables, leaving grown-ups free to enjoy innovative chef demos and samples of local tipples.

Visit the North Leeds Food Festival site

Blenheim Palace Food Festival, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, 24-26 May 2025

In this rather dramatic setting, discover new flavours and be inspired by passionate chefs, food makers and bakers, and esteemed culinary guests. For street food, live music, curated food stalls, kitchen and homeware gifts, Blenheim is the place to be. If you happen to have an Annual or Palace and Play Pass, it’s also completely free (else find tickets online).

Head to the Blenheim Palace Food Festival in 2025.

FOOD FESTIVAL IN JUNE 2025

Taste of London, Regent’s Park, 12-16 June 2025

This five-day ‘food-fuelled garden party’, as the organisers call it, happens in the heart of the capital’s vast Regent’s Park. It features an impressive number of London’s hottest chefs and restaurants, and introduces movers and shakers new to the food scene. Cocktails, desserts, cook schools, and street food await.

Visit Taste of London for festival map, tickets, and info.

FOOD FESTIVALS IN JULY 2025

Great Yorkshire Show, North Yorkshire, July 8-11 2025

A 140,000-strong crowd descends on Harrogate each summer to celebrate British food, countryside, and farming at the Great Yorkshire Show. Staged since 1837, this is one of the UK’s oldest, largest agricultural shows. Marvel at the prize animals in the judging ring, sample fine Yorkshire produce, and enjoy the live music.

For FAQ and tickets, visit the Great Yorkshire Show online.

National Geographic Traveller Food Festival, Business Design Centre, London, 19-20 July 2025,

With a food hall, wine and spirits theatre, workshops, master food photography sessions and more, Nat Geo’s fabulous food fest gives you the chance to ‘taste the world’ in the heart of London. Head to the main stage to see decorated chefs, TV personalities, and cookbook writers, and be inspired by their words, wit, and culinary wisdom.

Global gourmets: get your 2025 tickets to the National Geographic Traveller Food Festival here.

Rock Oyster, Dinham House, North Cornwall, 24-27 July 2025

Alongside an artisanal food extravaganza, Rock Oyster has a stellar lineup of musical treats in 2025, from the Ministry of Sound Classical to Rag’n’Bone Man, UB40 and more. Sea, sand, surf, foodie workshops and sessions, salivating over delicious gourmet goods: Rock Oyster 2025 has it all.

Check out the Rock Oyster 2025 schedule and tickets here.

Feast On, Bristol, 24-27 July 2025

Hosted on Bristol’s iconic Durdham Downs parkland, Feast On offers signature dishes from the city’s top chefs as well as a produce market, open fire cooking demos, live music, and tasting opportunities. Bristol is also home to most of this publisher’s staff (it’s where Printslinger is based) so this Bristol Food Festival is of course a huge favourite. See you there!

Get stuck in to Feast On Bristol in 2025

FOOD FESTIVALS IN AUGUST 2025

PieFest, Melton Mowbray, 3-4 August 2025

Does this food festival speak for itself? To eat all the pies – or to see who makes some of the country’s very finest examples thereof – come to pie-central, Melton Mowbray, in early August. Check the suspension on your car before setting off, boot laden with golden-pastry’d goodness…

Visit PieFest in August 2025.

Glasgow Foodies Festival, 8-10 August 2025

Glasgow’s is one in a cracking series of 14 ‘Foodie’ festivals taking place right across the UK, each celebrating the food of its region. Expect fire-pit cooking, an artisan market, street food, award-winning chefs, and great music. If you’re looking for a food festival in Scotland, look no further.

Visit Glasgow Foodies Festival online for more.

The Big Feastival, the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire, 22-24 August 2025

Cross a music festival with a food fest and you have: the Feastival. Hosted at a farm in the Cotswolds, it’s a weekend extravaganza of music, dancing, top-class chefs, finger-licking street food, and family fun.

Get your tickets to Oxfordshire’s Big Feastival here.

FOOD FESTIVALS IN SEPTEMBER 2025

Narberth Food Festival, Pembrokeshire 2025 (date TBC)

West Wales has a burgeoning food scene, and the pretty market town of Narberth celebrates the best of it. Entry is free and the 50-plus stalls are full of creative flavours: perhaps local ferments, whisky, preserved fish, or vegan meals. There’s also a rich menu of music and activities for children. Check online before making any plans, we’re just waiting with everything crossed for the 2025 dates.

Visit Narberth Food Festival in 2025

Abergavenny Food Festival, 20-21 September 2025

The picturesque market town of Abergavenny is the perfect backdrop for one of Britain’s finest food festivals. From inspiring food education to parties in the Dome, meet-the-author events, and every street food and gourmet treat you can imagine, Abergavenny Food Festival really is a treat for all the senses. Full of food? Walk it off with a stroll around the nearby castle or canal.

Visit one of Wales’s best food festivals: Abergavenny 2025.

Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival, Suffolk, 27-28 September 2025

2025 is the Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival’s 20th anniversary: what a year to experience this brilliant event for the first time. it features cooking classes for kids, tractor rides, and over 100 local food and drink producers from across Suffolk. As a not-for-profit outfit, its raison d’être is to reconnect people with the food provided by the nearby landscape, and to champion emerging and established producers. (Exactly what Printslinger guidebooks like to do, too.)

Get your tickets to Aldeburgh’s food festival 2025 here.

FOOD FESTIVALS IN OCTOBER 2025

East Midlands Food Festival, Melton Mowbray, 5-6 October 2025

Rural foodie capital, Melton Mowbray, celebrates its fêted pork pies alongside plentiful artisanal treats every autumn, at this covered food festival. Stalls spill over with farm-fresh produce, while the area’s multicultural flavours wait to be sampled: the Iranian offering is strong. For Pie Fest, you’ll need to be here in August.

Plan your trip to the East Midlands Food Festival 2025 here.

LOVE FOOD? DISCOVER OUR FOODIE TRAVEL GUIDES

If you love local food, and supporting smaller, independent and often family-run food and drinks businesses (and farmers and farm shops), have a look at our three guidebooks on the button below. They’d each make a great gift for your foodie friend, or treat yourself to the trio. Banish forgettable food, and eat better (while buying local) with The Extra Mile, The Coastal Café Guide, or The Farm Shop Guide.

Posted on 06/11/202406/11/2024 by The Extra Mile

THE FARM SHOP GUIDE: SUPPORT BRITISH FOOD AND FARMING

The Farm Shop Guide shown over The Times coverage

Support British Food with The Farm Shop Guide (as seen in The Times, Waitrose Weekend, and The Telegraph)

England, Scotland and Wales (and Ireland of course, but that’s a whole other book) have some incredible farm shops, artisan food producers, and farm shop cafés and restaurants. Printslinger’s new book, The Farm Shop Guide, will help you find them near you or when on your travels. To find local farm shops near you, plus farmers’ markets and foodie festivals, dip into our fresh new farm shop directory today. As Guy Singh-Watson, Riverford Organic Farm veg box pioneer, said, “Proper farm shops – ones that actually grow, rear, or make most of their own produce with love, attention to detail, and a genuine connection to the land – are a beautiful thing. This book will help you find them.”

To make it easier for you to find and support local farms, farmers, food producers, and farm shops, The Farm Shop Guide features over 160 of them. It has organic farm shops, family-friendly farm events, seasonal farm experiences, and dog-friendly cafés on farms around the country. For farm-fresh produce from some of the country’s very best farm shops, get or gift a copy of The Farm Shop Guide today. It’s the ultimate book gift for the foodie in your life.

Highlights of The Farm Shop Guide

165 farm shops and farm shop cafés and restaurants
Seasonal farm events including Easter, Halloween, Christmas, and seasonal activities
Info on pick-your-own (PYO) fruit, PYO vegetable and crops, PYO flowers, food festivals, and farmers markets
Icons to help trip-planners, i.e. dog friendly, family friendly, EV charging, parking, good vegetarian selection
Eight geographic sections, with striking maps and chapters on Scotland and Wales
264 full-colour pages with beautiful photography and maps throughout
15 farming and food-related charities featured: RSPB Fair to Nature, Nature Friendly Farming Network, Community Supported Agriculture, Pasture for Life, Buglife, Permaculture Association, the Biodynamic Association, Better Food Traders, OF&G Organic, the Soil Association, the Sustainable Food Trust, the Royal Countryside Fund, LEAF – Linking Environment and Farming, the Wildlife Trusts, and the Farm Retail Association.
A donation will be made to the Sustainable Food Trust for every book sold.

Support British farming and independent, local food businesses

At Printslinger books, we’re all about seeking out and celebrating smaller food businesses. The ones that go the extra mile for their staff, the owners who genuinely care about you as their customer, and the places that are there for you when the chips are down. Our three current guidebooks are The Extra Mile: Delicious Alternatives to Motorway Services, The Coastal Café Guide, and The Farm Shop Guide. All have been Amazon #1 Bestsellers in 2024 (even The Extra Mile Edition 4, which came out in 2023).

It just goes to show that people love to support the local people, local businesses, and the local cafés and farm shops that our books bring to your attention. For farm-fresh produce, artisanal local food producers, and the best farm shops near you, support British food and farmers and get The Farm Shop Guide today.

To buy all three books at the special bundled price of just £42 (currently better value than you’ll find them for on Amazon), visit our online bookshop today.

Posted on 11/11/202211/11/2022 by The Extra Mile

WHY LOCAL FOOD MATTERS

At the Extra Mile, we’re firm proponents of local food. We crow about it at every opportunity. You’ll see it plastered throughout the book. But why?

Industrial scale farming and huge supermarket supply chains have served us well in feeding the growing population, but it has come at a cost. The quest for cheaper food has meant the increased use of fertilizers, pesticides, energy, land and water. As a result, our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss and a major driver of climate change, accounting for around 30% of total human-produced emissions.

Local food is the antithesis of this form of production. It’s produce grown within a short distance of where it’s consumed (although there’s no formal legal definition). Here are some of the benefits.

Buying locally grown food encourages small scale, nature-sensitive farming…

…and shifts away from harmful industrial monocropping. The impact on bees is just one well-documented example of the harm monocropping can wreak on nature. By contrast, farming in harmony with the local microclimate can have a restorative effect on the soils and wildlife.

It supports local farming businesses and gives back to the community

Money spent with growers and neighbouring cafes and restaurants keeps money close to home, instead of going to faceless national businesses. That develops agriculture and hospitality in the area and keeps communities and economies thriving. The New Economics Foundation estimated that for every £1 spent in the local food network, £3.70 is generated in social, economic and environmental value. Food festivals (such as the eatFestival shown in the two images below) are a great way to discover some of your very local producers.

It has lower food miles

In the UK we import around half of our food. Buying local means crops don’t have far to go once they’ve been harvested. Without the need to drive crops long distances between where they’re grown and consumed, the carbon footprint shrinks, reducing the impact of your lunch.

It’s tastier and more nutritious

Crops can only be grown in accordance with the prevailing weather, which means local food is largely seasonal. Produce that ripens or matures naturally is served fresh, which means it’s tastier and more nutritious than food that is picked early (or out of season) and ripened artificially on its journey to shops.

If shopping locally, choosing food that hasn’t travelled far, and supporting smaller-scale and often independent food businesses is what gets you out of bed of a morning, dip into The Extra Mile. The guidebook is packed with small local cafés and offers viable alternatives to monotonous, motorway service station food, and disappointing forecourt food. Browse our Venue Finder here or buy the most up-to-date version of the guidebook for your own glovebox or that of a friend today at The Extra Mile’s online bookshop.

Posted on 01/09/202207/09/2022 by The Extra Mile

TELL US YOUR TIPS

The Extra Mile from Glovebox Guides (ed. 3)

Avoid the Services: Nominate great cafés for the new guide

Research is underway for the 2023 edition of The Extra Mile – Delicious Alternatives to Motorway Services – every driver’s essential guide to good food on the move.

Nominations are welcomed from (or for) independent cafés, cosy tea rooms, quirky pit-stops and welcoming farm shops – within a 15-minute drive of a motorway or main A-road junction – to feature in this useful glovebox guidebook and on its companion website. Is there anywhere we really shouldn’t miss?

Writer, Kerry O’Neill, said, “We’re keen to fill the upcoming fourth edition of this sell-out guide with some classic and new foodie destinations to help drivers avoid the monotony of motorway services. We’ll uncover the best farm shops, cafés, tea rooms and eateries we can find near motorway and main A-road junctions, many of which would love a helping hand following the challenges of recent years. The Extra Mile helps its readers find and support the small and independent food and drink businesses who are going the extra mile to keep us all fed and watered in local, low-food-mile style.”

England, Scotland and Wales: the café hunt continues

In early Sept 2022, Icelandic foodie and photographer Iris Thorsteinsdottir will set off to explore Scotland’s off-motorway and A-road wilds on a quest to find more venues to join The Extra Mile while author Kerry O’Neill continues her quest across Wales and England.

Nominate yourself or a favourite venue

To nominate a venue to join The Extra Mile – Delicious Alternatives to Motorway Services for the team to visit, go to Find a stop to see if it’s already part of the collection. If not, submit the information at Join the Guide. Nominations should be interesting and independent (or part of a small regional chain) with a strong locally-sourced food ethos. They must be within a short drive – 15 minutes maximum and the closer the better – of a motorway or main A-road junction in mainland England, Wales or Scotland. Most importantly, they should be friendly, foodie and fabulous!

Who can be nominated?

Coffee shops and tea rooms
Cafés and bistros (including those within gardens or visitor attractions)
Farm shops, farm shop cafés, garden centre cafés
Delis and bakeries
Vegetarian and plant-based cafés
Unusual take-aways, pre-order picnics/ veg box companies
Ice-cream parlours
Breweries, wineries or distilleries with sit-in food options
Family-friendly and dog-friendly spots

Buy a copy for yourself or for a gift

The Extra Mile – Delicious Alternatives to Motorway Services is the essential glovebox guidebook for anyone seeking interesting eats while exploring England, Scotland and Wales by car. It’s the ideal gift for drivers, food lovers and gloveboxes everywhere. The most recent edition (ed. 3, 2019, by Laura Collacott) sold out and was refreshed and reprinted for 2022 by Glovebox Guides. The new, fourth edition is being compiled now, with a deadline for inclusion of 30 Sep 2022. The book will be in good bookshops and online in 2023. For updates and an alert when the new edition is available to order, subscribe to our newsletter on the homepage. Buy the current edition now while stocks last.

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Notes for editors
For further press information and to discuss related content, photography, book giveaways and reader competitions, email Kerry at The Extra Mile Guide.

The Extra Mile guidebook
The Extra Mile – Delicious Alternatives to Motorway Services is the essential glovebox guidebook to memorable food and drink experiences while on the move. It helps readers replace monotonous motorway food with the fresh, colourful and often locally sourced flavours of over 300 independent cafes, growers, makers and bakers, all within a 15-minute drive of a motorway or main A-road junction. Plan your journey, explore the alternative eateries and eat better when on the move, while supporting local producers.

The Extra Mile website
The Extra Mile site is an extension of the print guidebook with venue details and a ‘search by map’ function to direct hungry drivers to their chosen foodie venue. The site is updated regularly, with a curated collection of stop-offs, eateries and farm shops featuring in each new edition of the book. To submit a venue or request to join the collection, visit Join the Guide.

Glovebox Guides
Glovebox Guides is an imprint of Printslinger Ltd, the independent publishing company run by renowned slow food lover, Alastair Sawday. Glovebox Guides will publish the fourth edition of The Extra Mile – Delicious Alternatives to Motorway Services in 2023 as the first in a series of new titles. Buy direct from Glovebox Guides to ensure you get the refreshed 2022 reprint.

Kerry O’Neill, author
Kerry O’Neill is a UK-based travel researcher and writer with an MSc in literary tourism. She has collaborated with key sustainable travel, food and wine brands including Secret Compass Expeditions, Sustrans, TravelLocal, Sawday’s Special Places to Stay, Sidetracked magazine, Avery’s Wine Merchants and FoodWorks South West. The Extra Mile is her first collaboration with Glovebox Guides.