New Hampshire Highland Games & Festival

Men in kilts tossing cabers, women in kilts throwing hammers, what's not to love?

Without a doubt the best highland games I've been to with marching bands, Celtic bands, venders coming from all over New England, Canada, and beyond. The food was awesome, where else can you find fast food haggis by the gallon? Something as simple as bread pudding made into something to die for by adding whisky sauce - OMG!

Meat pies, bridies, sausage rolls, bangers, rumbledethumps, cock - leekie - soup, scotch broth, lamb stew, shepherd's pie, scotch eggs, shaved lamb on a roll, pasties. In yet another tent they had tons of seafood including scotch salmon, highland crab soup......but no finnan haddie or cullen skink - what's up with that????

Did I mention the whisky tasting? Didn't make it that far - too busy sampling the scotch ales!

The games are spread out all over the place and you could easily spend a day (or two) here checking out all the clan booths, games, bands, singers, border collie contests, etc.

You can even buy yourself a 100% legal title - a lordship or ladyship as you will by donating money to save the Scottish Highlands, well you actually purchase a few square feet of land and the titles come with it............Lord Fin of Glencoe, etc.

Did I mention lasses in mini kilts?

This festival runs 3 days; we went on the first day, Friday, and it was pretty disappointing. There was lots of music(all good), on several stages, but no actual games or events, aside from the sheep dog trials. Frankly it was boring. Lots of vendors selling kilts, shawls, plaids, etc. Food was mediocre and of course overpriced. All the true events happen on Saturday but it's still expensive to go on Friday when there's not much to do. They should at least have some dancing or preliminary competitions to watch on Friday! Parking and crowd control was well done. Lots of porta-potties!

2019 review: You don't need to be Scottish to have a good time here. We watched some people pick up heavy rocks, throw heavy logs, listened to great music, ate some great food (cooking demo) and bottles of whisky that cost over $100.

So much fun!

Between the games themselves, the sheep herding, bagpiping, and everything else, it was a very good time.

Reason for knocking off a star is the lack of any sorts of food options that don't contain meat and/or gluten. My wife is a vegetarian, and there was nothing. I can't do gluten, and once again nothing. I know it's scottish, but I feel like there should be *some* options?

A must see, a very unique festival. Parking is offsite but the shuttle buses were operating smoothly, it took about 1/2 hour from our parking spot at Hobo village from our arrival until dropped off at the gate of the festival. Buy your tickets ahead, long line for credit card ticket purchase. Once inside we found that the schedule of events is jam-packed with activities. Every 15 minutes a new activity was beginning. We'll be going again next year!

The New Hampshire Highland Games should be something on everyone's bucket list. My fiancée and I have been coming up for the past 4-5 years and are never disappointed. Food, music and crowd is always spot on!

Every year we come up, we spend the weekend of the three days the event is going on enjoying the games, the music and of course, the food! Meat pies, lamb stew and everything else is always soooo good. Pipers from all over the US and Canada come in and nothing sounds better than the pipes blasting over the White Mountains! We initially came up to support my good friend from Scotland who is in one of, if not, the most popular band and quickly turned out to become a tradition. The beer tents are always a blast when sitting and getting a drink and all of a sudden a piper comes in and starts blasting away.

If your not a fan of the bagpipes or not of Scottish decent, trust me, for the weekend EVERYONE is Scottish and you will leave being a huge fan. Even the Lincoln Police are dressed up in kilts for the weekend, classic!