Events this week...

RIDES, games, toys and of course, candy floss, will be a plenty over the next week as Kendal welcomes the Spring Fair to town. On New Road from Friday until Sunday, May 23.

COFFEE MORNING

DEMONSTRATION dances, a tombola, home-baking, raffles and stalls will all feature at the Furness Clog Dancers' coffee morning on Saturday from 9.30am-11.30am at St. Mary's RC Centre in Ulverston.

OPEN GARDENS

WITH plants, cakes and raffles, Mere Lodge, on Birthwaite Road in Windermere, is the venue for Cumbria Wildlife Trust's open garden on Sunday from 2pm-5pm.

FROM 11am-4pm on Sunday, Newton Hall at Whittington will host an open garden event, with all proceeds going to CancerCare. Call 01524-381820 for details.

CONCERTS

WINDERMERE Choral Society presents its Spring Concert on Saturday from 7.30pm at the village's Carver Church. As well as a selection of popular songs, the evening of music will include Faure's Requiem, The Wonderful Story of Noah and his Floating Zoo by Michael Flanders and Joseph Horovitz and Sousa's The Liberty Bell.

THE Phil Collins/Genesis tribute act Face Value, will be performing at Workington's Monroe's Bar on Saturday from 9pm. For details, 01900-602122.

THE centenary celebrations of Milnthorpe Methodist Church will include a concert by Annie Mawson on Friday night from 7.30pm where the Cumbrian harpist will be singing and playing in her own special way. Call 015395-62503 for details.

IN aid of the church's Raise the Roof Appeal, a concert of various musicians from the congregation and church choir will take place at Kendal Parish Church on Thursday. Call 01539-721248 for details.

SOLOISTS Wendy Sharrock and Jolyon Dodgson will join the massed choir, brass band and organ for a come and sing extravaganza, styled on the Last night of the Proms, at Lancaster Town Hall on Saturday from 7.30pm. Call 01524-824820 for details.

PURCELL'S Rejoice in the Lord Always will feature in a concert by Kirkby Lonsdale Choral Society at the town's St Mary's Church on Sunday from 7.30pm.

CARNFORTH'S Christ Church will host a concert by The Bach Invention on Friday night from 7.30pm. Well-known local harpsichord player Ann Bond will direct the group of top-rank musicians who will perform pieces by Bach and other French composers of his time. This concert will be repeated on Saturday from 8pm at Cartmel Priory.

THEATRE

THREE men are put through their paces - as life models at their local art college - in a comedy by Settle man Martin Lewton. With strong language and some male nudity, Life Models looks at men's bodies ...in more ways than one. Perfect for a girls' night out and the men in the audience should laugh out loud in recognition of the models' predicament. The is set at 7.30pm on Saturday and Sunday at the Lancaster Grand. Call 01524-64695 for booking details.

SALISBURY'S Relish, a play by the Freerange Theatre Company at the Heron Theatre in Beetham, is a double bill of Victorian vintage drama a comedy and a chiller all in one. It is showing on Friday and Saturday from 7.30pm. For details, call 015395-64283.

A FULLY costumed and choreographed show paying tribute to the best of the West End and Broadway is A Night at the Musicals, a show for musical lovers of all ages. It is showing at Preston's Charter Theatre from 7.30pm. Call 01772-258858 for details.

ANOTHER treat for musical fans will be Beyond Broadway, at Forum 28 in Barrow, on Friday night from 7.30pm. This razzle dazzle show offers UK audiences the chance to hear the songs that are currently packing theatres in the Big Apple itself. Call 01229-820000 for details.

LADY in Red, a shocking new play lifting the lid on domestic violence, comes to Lancaster's Dukes on Thursday from 7.30pm. Telling the story of Rose, a woman who is a prisoner in her own home and attempting to escape a violent relationship, the compelling drama is tackled sensitively with tension, twists and humour. Thanks to the Lancaster Community Safety Partnership, this performance is free and well worth going to see. For details, call 01524-598500.

EXHIBITIONS

PRINTFEST, the annual gathering of printmakers from around the UK and Europe returns to Ulverston this weekend. The two-day event, which begins on Saturday, offers visitors the chance to buy unique edition etchings for as little as £10. The subjects of the 30 exhibiting artists range from angels to seahorses and printmaking demonstrations and live music will all feature. Printfest is the Coronation Hall, call 01229-587140 for details.

CONCERNING Animals is an intriguing exhibition by Paul Hill beginning at the Brewery Arts Centre on Saturday which takes a slanted look at the human world through the relationships we have with our pets. The master photographer, who has worked on such publications as The Guardian, The Observer and the Radio Times, has captured images from dog chews' to baby's dummies and images of animals as both killers and victims. For details, call 01539-725133.

A CENTURY of Lake District art from 1850-1950 will be on display at Anthemion, The Antique Shop at Cartmel, from on Friday. The exhibition, "o'er dale and hill", features familiar scenes immortalised in oil and watercolour by the likes of William Mellor, W.L. Turner and Edward H. Thompson. It is open from 10am-5.30pm. Call 015395-36295 for details.

THE touring exhibition of craftsman Jim Partridge's fine woodwork arrives at Carlisle's Tullie House on Saturday. Specialising in work that deals with our place in the landscape, Burning Bridges includes carved vessel forms and furniture projects set against a backdrop of his monumental site-specific commissions. For details, call 01228-534781.

FOOT-and-mouth disease, and the effect on Cumbria is the focus of an exhibition of panoramic photographs at Lancaster's Folly. Till the Cows Come Home is an award-winning collection by Nick May and features evocative images from the autumn of 2001 to spring 2003 - from the initial devastation to the recovery and rebuilding of the countryside. Call 01524-388550 for details.

THIS year marks the centenary of the Lakes Arts Society - founded by W.G. Collingwood, secretary to the better-known John Ruskin. To mark this auspicious anniversary, an exhibition of works by some of the founder members (including Collingwood, Arthur Severn, Cuthbert Rigby and W.L.Turner) will be on show at The Ruskin Museum in Coniston until June 6. 015394-41164.

A CHANCE to view the work of the Eden Artisans is yours on Sunday when they will be exhibiting in the Eden Arts Open Studios Event above Kirkby Stephen Tourist Information Centre.

IN Brantwood's Severn Studio, you can see an exhibition drawn from the estate itself. Artist in residence Jill Rock has spent four-months at Coniston's stately home collecting and painting on natural found objects to make an assemblage of pieces for the exhibition In the Spirit of Ruskin. Meanwhile, in the Old Dining Room, Ruskin's Romantic Tours 1837-1838 is a collection of sketches done by a young Ruskin when travelling around the Lakes with his parents. For details, call 015394-41396.

THIS week is your last chance to catch the exhibition of botanical illustrations at Ambleside's Armitt Museum, Gallery and Library. Closing on May 21, the exquisite plant paintings make for some good viewing. Call 015394-31212 for details.

A FASCINATING exhibition into the life and works of the well known fell-walker, author and artist Alfred Wainwright is showing at Kendal Museum. His hand-drawn, hand-written pictorial guides to the Lakeland fells are still in use after 40 years and many of these original pen and ink works, as well as personal belongings such as his walking boots and (heavily darned) socks will be on display. 01539-721374.

WALKS

THE Walking the way to Health One Step at a Time series of short walks will set off from Staveley Mill Yard on Sunday at 11am, for a two-mile stroll around the village; on Tuesday, also at 11am, meet at Kendal Leisure Centre for a walk along the canal path and on Thursday from 2pm a walk from Kirkland to Fletcher Park (suitable for wheelchair users) will set off from Peppercorn Lane car park. For details, call 01539-729511.

GO BATTY on Friday night from 9pm when a National Trust warden leads a late evening walk beside Windermere with the aim of seeing (and hearing) some nocturnal flying animals. Call 015394-36269 to book.

TALKS

FOOTAGE taken while BASE-jumping and wildlife filming in the aerial company of peregrine falcons, will feature in a lecture and film showing at Rheged, near Penrith, on Saturday from 8pm. Leo Dickinson, one of the finest adventure filmmakers of all time, will present the Helly Hansen National Mountaineering Exhibition lecture alongside his film In the Wrong Place at the Right Time. For details, call 01768-860005.

BERNARD O'Donoghue, teacher of Medieval English at Oxford, will take Tuesday's Wordsworth Trust summer poetry reading at the Thistle Hotel, Grasmere, alongside fellow poet, Helen Farish a writer in residence at the Wordsworth Trust and a teacher of literature and creative writing. The reading is from 6.30pm, call 015394-35544 to book.

MAY'S Object of the Month talk at Kendal's Abbot Hall will be on J.M.W. Turner's Passage of Mount St. Gothard. Words will flow from 2pm on Wednesday. Call 01539-722464 for details.

SPORT

BARBON Manor's steep and twisting entrance drive will become a race track tomorrow, as all classes of vehicles up to and including full-blown racing cars try their luck in the annual hill climb, which is also a round of the British Hill Climb Championship. Practice starts at 10am with the first racing runs at 2pm.

KENDAL's cricketers have a double action weekend starting with a Northern League encounter with Blackpool, starting at 1pm on Saturday and, on Sunday, Southport Trinity are the visitors in the first round of the Lancashire Cup, 1.30pm start.

NETHERFIELD'S cricketers travel to Lytham St Anne's for their fixture on Saturday.