For some 150 years, the last Saturday in April has always been celebrated as Barley Saturday in the county town of Cardigan on the West Wales coast and is now one of Wales’s biggest Spring festivals.
With colourful festivities to mark the end of winter, Cardigan is the focus of a lively celebration of rural life, which draws visitors from far and wide for its huge displays of vintage farm machinery and spectacular show of horses.
Barley Saturday is so-named because it marks the end of the Spring barley planting by local farmers. Traditionally the parade was also an occasion to show off and inspect locally bred stallions to be put out to stud. It was also an opportunity to hire farmhands for the summer amidst general merry making and other courting rituals!
Nowadays, Cardigan’s streets are closed to traffic for the parade (1.30 p.m. – 3.30 p.m.) and soon fill with people who flock to the area for the event where the well groomed and festooned horses are still the centre of attention.
Organiser Tudor Harries explains how the festival has grown in recent years:
“Ceredigion is renowned as a county that has a proud tradition in horse breeding and the original aim with the Barley Saturday was to ensure we celebrate those traditions and keep our heritage alive. The appeal of the festival has grown significantly in recent years and we have added the vintage cars and tractors as well as the floats to make this a truly enjoyable day out for the family.”
After the 11.30 a.m. judging of various horse competitions, the crowds then watch the horses do their lap around the town in a spectacular horse parade at approximately 2.00 p.m., with the magnificent running stallions a sight to behold. The horses are followed by an array of vintage cars, motorbikes, tractors, carriages, milk floats plus beautiful gypsy wagons.
The Barley Saturday horse competition classes feature Welsh ponies and cobs, Arabs, Shetlands and Sports Horses, Coloureds, Heavy horses, horse drawn carriages, tradesman’s turnout and even the occasional donkey makes an appearance! The event has in-hand classes and a supreme championship competition.
