Gloucester Tall Ships Festival

Gloucester's Victorian docks — warehouses, cranes and all — make an unexpectedly good backdrop for a flotilla of tall ships to tie up for four days, most of them open to climb aboard. Live music and family entertainment fill the quayside around them.

It's a proper maritime spectacle without the crowds or prices of the bigger coastal festivals, and the docks themselves are worth the trip regardless — museums, independent shops and cafés built into the old warehouses.