[Ad- gifted experience] When it comes to fairs, we’ve been to quite a few, including a steam fair a few years back. We were pretty excited to go along to a similar one, to see all of the rides and games. Horton’s Steam Fair feels like you’ve travelled back in time, full of historical, restored vintage rides and stalls.
At Horton’s Steam Fair, you can pre-book tokens that can be used on any of the activities around the grounds. Everything cost one token, so it’s easy to figure out what you want to spend it on! If you purchase a defined number of tokens, you can get free ride tokens, which are green and can be used specifically on rides (not games or attractions). It’s an interesting system and the tokens don’t feel like ones you’d lose.
When we got there, it was a bright sunny day, so we took in all of the rides, picked up our tokens, and then Robin and Amelia instantly went on the giant swings. This swing did fly them quite fast and sort of out a lot, which feels like such a fun ride. We grabbed some ice cream next, from a vintage ice cream van, which served modern ice cream but was stunning. We took our ice cream inside the house of curiosities. They had two of these exploration houses; one of curiosities and one of mirrors. We’ve seen mirrors before, but the curiosities felt so old-time-y with all of the vintage signs outside.
Inside, there were lots of “believe it or not!” signs that had a display of different strange things. Some might be real, some might not be real – it’s really up to you to decide. All of us found these things to be strange, unusual, and interesting to talk about out of the sun. It’s just a weird thing to experience in real life, much like vintage carnivals use to have. We then went back to rides! One of Kai, Amelia and Dann’s favorites is this sort of spinning around machine called the Lightning Skid, that you can use a break to whip back and forth. Kai was put in charge of the whip aspect, swinging around tons, which was a choice. Robin and I watched them whip around from the outside, which was quite a show.
We also went on the classic bumper cars, which all had fantastic paint jobs, and the merry-go-round which had a giant chicken amongst all of the horses. I really love the merry-go-round here, which has music that is loaded in from a stack of music with bits punched out, that then is played through the middle machine. It’s not actually a merry-go-round but is a English Galloper, which goes around the other way and is powered by steam. It’s a very interesting and classic looking ride.
We played a few of the games at Horton’s Steam Fair; hook a duck is a classic and all of us shot a cork gun at some candy. We also went to the little penny arcade building, where tokens could be exchanged for old pennies and used on the machines. I do like a good penny arcade – it’s such a fun way to see old-school machines. Robin got a key chain on the old claw. We also went on the big swings, which are two people and controlled by pulling aa rope! Horton’s Steam Fair is just such a unique and fun vibe.
We specifically went to the Hemel Hempstead location for Horton’s Steam Fair, as this is a traveling vintage fair that moves all throughout England. You can keep track of where they are going next through their website or their social media.
You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!