Hello dear readers! How are things!? Hopefully 2026 is going well so far. I’m back with another blog post and this week it’s a post focusing a little closer to home!
As I continue with the 2022 adventures, I thought it’d be fun to look back at a fun birthday weekend basking in some local culture. By pure coincidence, last week Peterborough then announced its intentions to bid for the UK’s “city of culture” in 2029. It’s funny how the timing married up but such news changed my plans for this post and now you’re treated to a much longer post – aren’t you pleased!?
Before we get to that though, I need to give you more context and a little “ProudOfPeterborough” story!
“It’s always an essay with you, isn’t it Jason?”
“Shh..”
Okay. So some of you will know that although I have spent much of my life living in Peterborough, I’m actually a Londoner at heart. It has shaped me in many ways and for the longest time caused a little caveat to make it clear that I am a Londoner!
“Where are you from mate?”
“Well.. I live in Peterborough but I’m FROM London. London, alright? I’m not Peterborough born and bred!”
Despite being so in-your-face London (myself and Danny Dyer are practically one!), I now acknowledge that the subsequent 28 years have possibly also had some bearing on my life (“take away his Londoner badge!!”).
Peterborough has repeatedly been voted the worst town in the UK to live and even with my London-tinted glasses, I’ve long felt sympathetic to such a lack of love for Peterborough. It’s not a town for starters so lets make that award null and void straight off the bat. Peterborough is a city!
The reputation has always felt somewhat harsh to me though. Don’t get me wrong, for the longest time I’ve dismissed Peterborough’s appeal myself but in true British fashion – it’s not that bad, is it?
Look, it’s not London of course! London is and always will be the greatest city in the world but every place in this world falls second to London. I blogged about and compared New York City to London a few years ago and rather fairly, I thought, judged that NYC fell just short on the grounds that “it wasn’t London”. A damning verdict but “them’s the rules” a perfectly reasonable judgment.
Anyway, point being that even as someone with no real skin in the game (“28 years Jason..”) I’ve felt that Peterborough’s reputation has been a little unjustified over the years.
One of my own gripes with Peterborough is that I’m a city boy. I’ve been to London three times already this year and it’s a city that has it all. Comparing the millions of inhabitants of London and the endless life that comes with that, I’ve always considered Peterborough a little quiet for my liking. A city of roughly 200,000, I’m practically living in the sticks, you know?
Travel plays a big part in changing your views, both globally and closer to home. I had a jam-packed 2017 of travel. I kicked off the year in Paris, I blagged a work trip to Scotland on the last day of February which spanned in to March. In April I had a multi-city break in the USA, in May I went to Germany and then I had to wait until August for the next trip!
Two travel-free months! What the fuck!? I’d be lying if I said that on June 30th I hadn’t been tempted to skip work and maintain my “trip a month” quota but being a true professional I bitterly went to work.
It did pose a question though.What was I supposed to do for the next two months? My other big passion was football of course and which two months of the year does football take a break? June and July – nightmare!
I could have moped around for two months, resenting how difficult life can be when you have to go two whole months without an overseas trip and having to work for a living but I did the next best thing and looked towards my own doorstep.
As dreaded as the work day is, I made the best of my lunch hours and working in the city centre and repeatedly took a little lunch-time outing over the summer.
Isn’t the cathedral gorgeous? Aren’t we lucky to have a free museum to visit? The bishop gardens are just lovely aren’t they? Who doesn’t want to spend their afternoons eating their lunch sat besides the river Nene? Peterborough is much nicer than it gets credit for.
I was inspired! I was also particularly fond of Instagram at the time and an idea came to me – a dedicated Instagram page sharing all things positive about Peterborough. There’s so much negativity about the city, particularly from its inhabitants, and yet there’s plenty to love about it. All I needed was a name – something alliterative maybe?
P.P..
I deliberated a few different P words but none of them fit just right. I was inching closer.. Pride? No, that’s not appropriate. Proud? PeterboroughProud? ProudPeterborough? ProudOfPeterborough.. Yes!
It wasn’t as alliterative as I’d originally hoped for but it rolled off the tongue nicely. Proud Of Peterborough! Instagram was very hashtag-focused at the time and I envisaged a hypothetical little community all contributing towards #ProudOfPeterborough (HA! Be careful what you wish for!).
On the 1st July 2017 I launched the account with this photo and thus ‘Proud Of Peterborough’ was born! A page dedicated solely to all things good about Peterborough.
I started with the best intentions. Alas, the travel and football lull didn’t last long. In August I went to Greece, September I visited Washington for the first time (hard to believe there was a time before Washington). In October I went to Madrid for football, followed by Germany for football in November and then a return to Edinburgh for Hogmanay / New Years. Alongside the domestic football, time with family and friends, work and other things I’d very quickly neglected ‘Proud Of Peterborough’
I think I only posted a handful of times within the first 9 months of the account and ProudOfPeterborough drifted off in to a little coma. Any time I’d try and resuscitate the bugger, I’d inevitably forget what the password was – “Never mind, just post this to my main Instagram account”
My love for Peterborough was growing but travel and football still dominated as much of my free time as humanly possible. Fast forward a few years and as some of you will remember, I decided to pack in my job and go “live” out in Washington for 3 months. Three whole months with Haleigh!
2020 was to be a year of great things. I left my job at the end of January and flew out to Washington in early February. Of course we all know what happened in 2020, it was an interesting time to be overseas and sadly I didn’t get a full three months as intended but nevertheless it was a big change.
I’m mindful I’ve not even got to the crux of this post yet so I’ll try keep this part short but long-story-short I was a Londoner going to live out in little Moses Lake for three months. Moses Lake with a population of 20,000-25,000! Fucking hell.
For those reading that don’t know me in real life, I am a quiet person. I’m not the most talkative, I am very much an introvert but there’s just something about big cities that I adore. I am fascinated by people. I love being in cities where life is happening around me and I feel a heavy dose of comfort in such cities.
London epitomises that perfectly, Peterborough has always felt a degree of too quiet for my liking. There are only 200,000 people here! Nothing happens, it’s too quiet. Blah, blah, blah.
and now I was off to temporarily live in Moses Lake? Haleigh would go off to work and what the hell was I supposed to do? I was surely going to die of boredom! My very first experience of Moses Lake three years earlier had seen me dropped off at a bus stop three miles outside of town – a good sign that out-of-towners do not visit Moses Lake for fun.
and yet I embraced it. I’m naturally an optimist. I think I’ll find the best in any situation and who knows what would happen with Haleigh, maybe Moses Lake would be a permanent home one day (it wasn’t).
I went to Moses Lake with the best intentions to make the best of it. Find some favourite hangout spots, try and acclimatise as best as I can. Just enjoy this rare experience of life somewhere else.
Truthfully, I know that this was aided by not having to work. Finance-permitting, I would retire tomorrow so three months without a job was bliss and definitely added to what was only a nine-week experience in Moses Lake but I loved it.
One of the things that struck me most about my time in Moses Lake was the community feel. I got a little swept up in it. I posted a nostalgia-heavy blog post a while back about it because there’s a little part of me that still misses Moses Lake. I know it’s not somewhere I’ll ever go back to but I have so many good memories of that place and one of the more vivid ones from that particular trip was drinking a beer in a carpet store whilst watching a rock band – one of the last “normal” pre-Covid experiences I had.
I should add that I don’t frequently spend my days drinking in carpet stores. This was part of Moses Lake’s inaugural “Brews and Tunes” festival but besides enjoyment, the overwhelming feeling was how has this happened here?
Logically, such a festival could not possibly happen in somewhere like Moses Lake and yet it had. It had because the community banded together and found a way to make it work and as a result I found myself beer-tasting my way through carpet stores, jewellery stores, estate agents and other such nonsensical locations to be hosting breweries from all over the Pacific Northwest.
I was truly inspired. Peterborough is ten times the size of Moses Lake. If Moses Lake can make me feel like this, what am I missing out on back home? There must be so many things going on back home that I have no knowledge of because I get swept up with the mundaneness of life and working.
Being in Moses Lake made me more appreciative of Peterborough and I vowed once I returned that I’d start doing more of this on my doorstep. Alas, Covid struck and soon enough we were in-and-out of repeated lockdowns which sadly disrupted my plans but the Covid experience just exacerbated everything Moses Lake had already made me feel. I was already chasing the best life has to offer and Covid keeping us cooped up made me even more determined.
2020 was a bit of a write-off really but come 2021 I was eagerly anticipating the country opening back up and trying to get back to some semblance of normality. The UK kicked off the year with yet another lockdown before things gradually started re-opening in the Spring. It was time to start rediscovering a city I’d already called home for 23 years!
In a rather strange coincidence, this new focus on Peterborough overlapped with upcoming local elections in the UK. Peterborough’s own Conservative MP was campaigining with a particularly interesting political slogan – #ProudOfPeterborough
“Wait, what!?”
Now, I’d neglected my dedicated Instagram page for almost three years at this point but Proud Of Peterborough? Is that not the name of that Peterborough page I had? Can I even remember the password for that?
I successfully logged in and BAM!
XYZ has liked your post, ABC is now following you, JCR has tagged you in this post. The #ProudOfPeterborough hashtag had been flooded with posts, mostly political posts admittedly but it was traffic nonetheless and felt like an opportunity.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t reconsider changing the name. I didn’t particularly want the Conservative association but ProudOfPeterborough rolled off the tongue nicely and well, its second coming had arrived.
In the months that followed I found that Peterborough has so much going on. It turns out that a little research and investigation goes a long way and that if you seek out all that Peterborough has to offer, it comes back at you tenfold. In addition to my own amusement, ‘ProudOfPeterborough’ went from strength to strength with more than just Conservative MP’s jumping on the bandwagon.
and that long-winded story brings us to the beginning of this particular post.
“Wait, this is the start of your story!?”
I know, I know. Sue me, I like to ramble.
The Moses Lake 2020 experience had inspired me, I’d spent 2021 rekindling love for a city I’ve loved more than probably even I realised and that continued to grow in 2022. People were far more receptive to ‘ProudOfPeterborough’ than I’d ever really anticipated and yet in my mind, I wasn’t really doing all that much.
I think we can all play roles within our communities and there’s certainly a need for different roles but my part was largely promoter or maybe “unofficial ambassador” to glam it up a little bit. Truthfully, there are so many creative and incredible people doing far more good for Peterborough than I was and whilst I helped spread the good word of some of these things going on, it felt a little strange to be reaping any praise for a fairly small effort on my part.
I wanted to step up my efforts a bit in 2022 and signed up to volunteer at the inaugural “Peterborough Celebrates” festival in the Spring. Sadly, days beforehand I caught Covid and as quickly as I’d signed up to volunteer I was then withdrawing. Typical!
One summer event I was particularly looking forward to was a touring exhibit of London’s Natural History Museum – hosting a T-Rex exhibit in Peterborough’s stunning cathedral. I sought out the dates to spread the word, jotted them down but the thing that really caught my eye was a call-out for volunteers. Sign me up!
I blogged about it at the time because I genuinely think it’s one of the coolest things I’ll ever be part of. Roaring animatronic dinosaurs in a 900 year old cathedral – incredible!
It kickstarted a summer of local culture and fun. Volunteering every weekend was a joy and this was a summer that perfectly encapsulates why Peterborough is far more cultural and interesting than it perhaps gets credit for so here’s a little glimpse of what I got up to.
I was only going to look at August 2022 but on reflection it looks like I had a busy 31st of July so we’ll start there. Last time out I blogged about the significance of the Women’s European Championship hosted in England that summer and it just so happens that England won the final on this particular night.
The poetry scene in Peterborough is one to be particularly proud of and poet-guru and former Peterborough Laureate, Charley, was hosting another of her infamous “Freak Speak” nights at a park cafe which was bigger than I’d actually realised.
Having since been to a few poetry and spoken words events around Peterborough, it blows my mind at how talented people are in this city. This was an event that really gave people a platform to show off that talent.
It was a fun start to what proved to be a month full of fun cultural outings and topped off with news that England’s women had won the Euros – Chloe Kelly immortalising herself in to English folklore!
I was running incredibly short on annual leave by this point of the year so work was a pesky inconvenience for the summer but that didn’t stop me making the best of my lunch hours.
Peterborough’s museum is free to visit, with the occasional exhibit that has a fee, but for the most part free and with ever-changing exhibits I was curious to go and check out the ‘Proud To Be Posh’ exhibit taking place which was dedicated to the history of Peterborough’s biggest* football club, Peterborough United.
To rehash a phrase used earlier, I’ve no “skin in the game” when it comes to Peterborough United. I was fully immersed in to Tottenham long before ever moving to Peterborough but its undeniable the city reaps the reward when the football club are doing well and suffer the consequences when the football club aren’t doing well. That’s true of many cities, towns and villages across the UK.
I thought it was particlarly interesting that a section of the exhibit had been dedicated to Posh’s women’s team – very much playing at an amateur level of football but this was very much the summer of women’s football so it was nice to see that the exhibit focused on both the men and women’s football team.
The next weekend was my birthday weekend. I kicked off Saturday morning with another morning volunteering at the coolest exhibition ever, where else would you want to be on a Saturday other than hanging out with dinosaurs in a cathedral?
Following another fun shift I grabbed some food in town and then made my way over to another edition of the “Millfield festival”. I’d attended last year’s effort but it wasn’t the best day of weather which disrupted some of the festivities. This year it was a glorious sunny day and a perfect day for such celebrations.
Millfield is a very multicultural neighbourhood / area within Peterborough that largely has a reputation for being unsafe and a “no-go” area in certain circles and was certainly something I was aware of growing up.
In recent years local community group, Peterborough Presents, have worked very closely with those in the Millfield area to show off the best of the community and promote the different cultures and value that brings to the city. It was a fascinating day with a variety of different forms of entertainment to appease locals and “outsiders” alike and a credit to all involved.
Sandwiched in the middle of the festival was a typical Saturday afternoon festivity across the country – a 3pm Saturday football match. One of the beautiful things about football in this country is its pyramid system which means it doesn’t matter how small your club is or how far down the pyramid you are, you can theoretically climb to the top of the game. From the local leagues to the regional divisions, onwards to the national football league and eventually the glory of the Premier League and European competitions.
Realistically there’s a limit to what you can achieve but local “Peterborough Sports” were daring to test those limits and were quickly rising up the divisions. Peterborough is very much a “one club” city in my eyes so it has been surprising in recent years to see another Peterborough based team reach the 6th tier of English football – not all that far away from Peterborough’s “only” football team.
My curiosity was piqued and it just so happens Peterborough Sports play at an unknown stadium within walking distance of Millfield. Perhaps testament to its “no-go” reputation, I had no idea this venue even existed within the city – “the bee Arena”.
Quick sidenote but the photo is one of many murals in Peterborough by the infamous Nathan Murdoch who currently has an exhibit on at Peterborough’s Museum.
Anyway the “Bee Arena” is more of a local community centre, with a little playing field tucked away that they’ve made the best of. Calling it an arena is particularly kind but I couldn’t resist the temptation to tick off another stadium visit and watch some non league football.
It was a closely contested game with the home side, Peterborough Sports, coming out on top so a great way to kick off a new season. It was particularly nice to watch football with a beer on a warm sunny day, a luxury still not afforded to the bigger football games in England.
After the game I swung back past the Millfield festival to catch the last of the day’s festivities before calling it a night and heading home. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day and a good start to the birthday weekend.
Sunday happened to be my birthday and I was keen to go and do something to celebrate. I’d sooner do something, make memories or whatever rather than receive gifts. A birthday outing with the family was on the cards.
A big supporter of ‘ProudOfPeterborough’ over the last year or so had been nearby “Elton Hall” in a village on the outskirts of Peterborough, unsurprisingly, called Elton. They’re only open seasonally during the summer months but I vowed I’d make a visit and this was as good an excuse as any for such a visit.
Elton Hall has a long history, originally built in the 15th century, and has been owned by the same family since the early 17th century – impressive.
Myself, my parents, sister and brother-in-law took a short drive out to Elton to pay a visit and look around its gardens and the hall itself.
It’s a pretty place. It was clear that a lack of rain had had an impact but the gardens are beautifully maintained nonetheless. We spent a good while looking around the gardens and getting some photos before stepping inside Elton Hall and learning more about its history. The highlight was undoubtedly its library which was gorgeous. I don’t appear to have got any photos of the interior so I’m guessing photography is prohibited but if you want a little look, you can check out their website: Elton Hall
We wandered over to the nearby ‘Mulberry Cafe’ and Bosworth Garden Centre for a cuppa and some cake before driving over to Oundle’s “Tap and Kitchen” for a late lunch / early dinner.
Again, this wasn’t somewhere I’d been to previously but I’d heard good things, helped by the fact its next door to “Nene Valley Brewery” which means the restaurant has a few NVB beers on tap.
It’s a nice restaurant with an outdoor beer garden with a little stream running through it – very pretty on a warm day. The food was good, the beer was good and the company even better. It was nice to have paid visit to a couple of new places in the area today.
You can never be assured of good weather at any time of year in the UK but the summer months typically welcome “festival season” across the country and there were two exciting festivals still to come this month.
Firstly, Peterborough Pride was hosted in mid-August this year. It’s the latest I can recall it being hosted, it’s usually hosted in June or July, but I guess the organisers had the foresight to know I’d be blogging about it four years later and it fortunately makes the cut for this particular post.
Joking aside, it is of course a significant annual event in the city’s calendar and this particular year was no different. “The Green Backyard” hosted the event which is a local community garden encouraging all things community (obviously) and sustainability and is a real gem in the city centre.
It was a lovely day. It always is. Pride is essentially all about inclusion and any event that makes everyone feel welcome is an event worth supporting. I popped along for a little while and caught some of the entertainers on show. It’s an event that, even with insufficient funding, seems to have grown year-on-year and hopefully 2026’s event in July will be back even bigger and better.
The other big annual festival in the city is Peterborough’s Beer Festival which is hosted in the penultimate week of August every year. It boasts claim to be one of the biggest beer festivals in the entirety of the UK.
I don’t know if that’s down to the number of people visiting, the number of brewers showcasing their beers or the “UK’s longest bar” that spans 100+ meters but whatever the reason for such a claim, I’ll accept that it’s true and consequently means that Peterborough hosts the best beer festival in the UK.
It’s undoubtedly a highlight of the summer and people across Peterborough and even those from further afield will visit Peterborough every August to taste a beer or two, enjoy the various bands playing throughout the week of the festival and participate in what is probably the peak of Peterborough’s social calendar every year.
It’s always an enjoyable time and the only personal disappointment is that they bizarrely wrap it up before the three day bank-holiday weekend fully kicks in. I don’t think 2026’s dates have been confirmed as yet but if you fancy popping along, I’d bank on 18th-22nd August being the dates this summer.
It had been a busy summer with volunteering, museum trips, festivals galore and more but I had one final outing before the summer ended. Peterborough United hopped on the growing bandwagon for women’s football and for the first time, hosted Peterborough United’s women’s team at their stadium for a game against nearby Lincoln.
Of course there were no star players on display, with both playing at a fairly amateur level of football, but it was a great opportunity to support women’s football on your doorstep and with tickets priced at just £4 a decent crowd turned out to watch Peterborough win on a glorious sunny evening. For some reason I didn’t get any photos from the evening but 2,000+ locals went home happy.
That was it for my “summer of culture” in England’s “city of culture”. I think of all of the other things I’ve done in this city over the years that don’t get a mention here but are absolutely worthy of mention.
Music gigs, big and small. The plays, musicals and pantos at the three theatres in the city. The natural beauty of places such as “Ferry Meadows”, tower tours at Peterborough cathedral, other fantastic local landmarks. The wealth of talented artists and creatives. Art exhibits, art battles even. Poetry nights and lantern festivals and ice hockey and film festivals and book clubs and the list goes on. I could go on forever (“you already have mate..”).
The idea that Peterborough is lacking in culture is mind-boggling and I think even the locals don’t truly appreciate how many great things happen here, I was probably even one of them for a long time. This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about Peterborough on the blog but I definitely haven’t done it justice previously.
Is it a city worthy of being awarded the UK’s “city of culture”? I don’t know. History suggests I’m probably not the most impartial person to ask but nevertheless, I do believe Peterborough is a city to be proud of and one I proudly call home.
I find the variety of things happening in Peterborough and the people responsible for making those things happening really inspiring and I think the last few years have really shown me that if you make a little effort to find it, there’s something for everybody in Peterborough.
It’s no secret that I’ll soon be leaving Peterborough, and indeed England, and heading on to pastures new across the pond. With that development I’ve since relinquished control of “ProudOfPeterborough” and the reigns have been passed over for someone else to spread the good word of Peterborough but fear not, I’ll still be keeping tabs on what happens in Peterborough from afar.
and so I end this post with my fingers crossed that Peterborough is crowned the UK’s “city of culture” in 2029, if for no other reason than some reward to those contributing so much to the current culture of the city.
Finally, I leave you with some more photos of Peterborough’s scenery and various local events over the years that best showcase that.
and there you have it. A long-winded photo-heavy glimpse of just some of the things that Peterborough has to offer.
The likes of Flag Fen, Sacrewell Farm, Railworld Wildlife Haven, Longthorpe Tower, Norman Cross, nearby Burghley Estate and Stamford are just a few other places of interest that didn’t even get a mention in the post.
If you’re ever in Peterborough or find yourself curious enough to visit, feel free to give me a headsup and I’ll throw some recommendations your way. Or check out Peterborough’s newly launched tourism website: Discover Peterborough
Until next time!
Jason
aka “ProudOfPeterborough”
Jason likes to travel 