Proper Coffee

Ulterior Motives

Reasons to be there. Coffee that fits.

Some months a region just wants to be visited. We wait for those months and write about them; the rest of the year we don't bother.

The people you're with will think you're amazing for taking them to such cool events (the great coffee is just a coincidence).

Ulterior Motives · 16 Jul

August 2026 in Edinburgh (… and the ulterior coffee motive)

For three weeks every August, Edinburgh stops hosting festivals and turns into one.

Ulterior Motives · 24 Jun

July 2026 in Tyne & Wear (… and the ulterior coffee motive)

July around here belongs to brass. Durham hands its medieval centre to the colliery banners of the Durham Miners' Gala on the eleventh, and the bands don't…

Ulterior Motives · 20 Jun

July 2026 in West & North Yorkshire (… and the ulterior coffee motive)

For one stretch of July, you can't move in York for early music or in Harrogate for livestock.

Ulterior Motives · 16 Jun

July 2026 in London (… and the ulterior coffee motive)

London in July runs two clocks. One is the second week at the tennis and the Proms finding their opening night; the other is quieter: six wooden skiffs rowing…

Ulterior Motives · 31 May

June 2026 in Edinburgh (… and the ulterior coffee motive)

June is Edinburgh's own month, the one before August hands the city over to the Fringe.

Ulterior Motives · 19 May

June 2026 in London (… and the ulterior coffee motive)

London's June is a calendar of things that don't happen otherwise: a hundred locked gardens opened for one weekend at the start of the month, the King's…

Ulterior Motives · 11 May

June 2026 in Cornwall (… and the ulterior coffee motive)

Penzance closes its town centre to traffic for ten days at midsummer, parades giant sculptures through it on the 27th, and calls the whole thing Golowan.

Ulterior Motives · 29 Apr

June 2026 in Somerset (… and the ulterior coffee motive)

June in Somerset arcs from the last weekend of Bath International Music Festival to dawn on Glastonbury Tor summer solstice gathering on the 21st.

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