It began in 1986 when a group of friends decided to have a picnic on the moors overlooking the scenic reservoir “Binn Wood”, between Greenfield and Holmfirth in "The Last of the Summer Wine" country. It was fun and high-spirited so they did it again later the same year on a Bank Holiday Sunday.

In those early days of HIV/AIDS awareness, many gay men were beginning to realise that the killer disease had finally come to their doorsteps and a few friends and lovers suddenly fell victim as no drugs were available.

Then someone had the idea to charge a small fee to visit the picnic and the money would go to a recognised AIDS charity. The numbers of people who came along to give their support was much higher than expected and the day was a huge success.

It became a major fundraising event, and over the years various special ribbons or badges were sold raising monies for charities such as a ward at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, the research team at Leeds General Infirmary, Daybreak Trust, CHAL and Bridgeside.

Each year crowds used to gathered at the Ford Inn on the Greenfield Road out of Holmfirth, for a swift half before carrying on up to the Binn Wood picnic site. Each picnic saw the numbers keep growing and so after five years a larger site had to be found with adequate parking and facilities. Hence the move to the Huntsman Inn on the Greenfield Road out of Holmfirth.

Picnickers continued to bring along often spectacular picnics with items of campery that the Pink Picnic is legendary for: wind-up gramophones, candelabra, outrageous costumes. There was a prize for the “best spread” celebrating the effort and most elaborate picnic spreads, even a prize for the best table with floral arrangements! Some people even erected gazebos; employed a hunky butler (by the more privileged) who would serve Champagne and nibbles to their seated guests. The range of dress included anything from drag queens to hunks in military camouflage (coloured pink, of course!).

The 10th anniversary attracted over 1,300 people and was opened by Roy Fairhurst (the then Mr Gay UK).

With so many people coming and on average the pink picnic growing each year by some 40% or more it was soon realised that once again a larger site would be needed to be found.

In 1998 Castle Hill, Huddersfield’s most prominent land mark became the new location and two magnificent Pink Picnic events were held there in '98 and '99.

The event unfortunately had to be cancelled in 2000 as permission was denied by the local authority, and in 2001 due to Foot and Mouth Disease.

In 2002 the team due to popular demand brought back the famous Huddersfield Pink Picnic at Castle hill.

Unfortunately mid afternoon the heavens opened - many stayed on to defiantly to celebrate the return of the event and eat their picnic spreads!

In 2003 the sun once again shone. With the support of The Sun Inn (Bradford) and The Greyhound (Huddersfield), both well know gay pubs, they helped make this a great day.

But due to the size and fame now the Pink Picnic was becoming too big to organise by a few hard working volunteers giving up there own time and often some of there own money too for this major event.

Time to hand over the reins to the professionals!

The Brunswick Centre a registered charity providing sexual health services to people in Calderdale and Kirklees took over the mammoth job of organizing the Pink Picnic – now a free event for all to come and celebrate and enjoy. The Greyhound is now joined by many other organizations including various council department and community services teams, businesses all helping to sponsor and enable to Pink Picnic to keep growing.

2004 saw some 3,000 people attend, the event...

2005 saw over 4,000 people turn up to a tremendous event which was opened by the local MP Kali Mountford! How times have changed along with the Picnic from its early humble days, but one thing stayed the same – a fun day out for everyone to enjoy and make new friends.

2006 is a BIG year for the Pink Picnic – it will be celebrating its 20th birthday – Don’t miss the party!!!!! Register with us for the latest news

Looking forward to seeing you all at the next picnic!

The Pink Picnic has even been celebrated in a published poem in the collection the “Flight of the Flamingo” by local author Robert Whiteley (ISBN 0-9521-6380-9).

About the Venue : A History of Castle Hill

Wiltshire has Stonehenge, Dorset has Maiden Castle but West Yorkshire has Castle Hill which has been inhabited on and off for at least 4,000 years. Now people in Huddersfield have been asked what they think should happen to the Hill. But what is it?

Castle Hill is nothing if not a landmark. It provides a visual backdrop for people in Huddersfield. It can be glimpsed from a considerable distance away and, from the top of its Tower, you can certainly see for miles and miles around. But why should the future of something that has been taken for granted for so long now be up for debate? We decided to brave the Hill's often bracing winds and climb its steep sides to find out more.

From the top of Castle Hill's Victoria Jubilee Tower we looked down at the ancient earthworks in the company of Kirklees Community History Manager Brian Haigh, Castle Hill Ranger Julian Brown and volunteer Tracey Mitchell.

On top of the world!

Now only an expanse of mud marks the site of the Castle Hill Hotel, demolished in 2005 and the home of the last people to actually live on the top of Castle Hill. But as Ranger Julian Brown points out there is still plenty of life up there: "We've got green woodpeckers, there's sparrowhawks and there's stoats, there's all sorts of things up here. On a day like this when Spring is on its way and the birds are beginning to sing, it's just perfect for bird-watching . We've got incoming birds up here - we've got yellow-hammers, we've got linnets, we've got all sorts of things. I've counted about 40 species of birds up here in 18 months."

If Castle Hill is on a par with Stonehenge, it's because of its human inhabitants but how much do we know about them? Brian Haigh explains: "The earliest evidence we've got of people actually settling or using this site comes from about 4,000 years ago - these were people of the Neolithic Period, the New Stone Age. What was found here was some stone axes and bits of broken stone things. We don't know who lived here or much else. That doesn't mean to say there's nothing else to be found - the whole site hasn't been excavated and previous excavations haven't been conclusive. There's a lot that could be done that might tell us more and with the changes that have taken place in archaeology it's no longer all about digging things up. It's often about analysing things that we do find."

Brian, Julian and Tracey

But while we know so little about these people, they and those who came after them have left their mark on the land. Brian tells us more about what can be seen from the top of the tower: "It's divided into three sections - there's the outer bailey which is the largest flat area, the middle bailey where the car park is located and we are on the highest point, the inner bailey.

"As you come into the tower the rock is very close to the surface and its cap of grenoside rocks has helped to shape the whole hilltop. The rocks around here are coal-measures in alternating bands of soft shales and clays. They get worn away very quickly and this does lead to these sort of plateaus being formed. The hard cap in the rock of this particular promontory made it attractive to settlers. They divided it up into three parts and at different times people have established ramparts around forming fortifications.

"What we can see today are mostly parts of a medieval castle established around the 1140s but the fortifications follow the lines of much earlier ones that go back to the Iron Age. This was quite a significant Iron Age fortification, very unusual in this part of the world. I think people know about Maiden Castle but in this part of the world fortifications are few and far between. However, it has to be said that most of the evidence we find above ground today is medieval.

The Medieval Well

"What's different from places like Maiden Castle is that today we've got a post-industrial landscape. We can see lots of mills, we can see the Galpharm Stadium and Emley Moor in the other direction. You've got to imagine this would have been much more wooded at an earlier period and the same axes found here might have been used to clear and control the woodland. The earliest settlers enclosed the inner bailey but it doesn't mean to say they didn't occupy the site down there to practise farming and various crafts. All that is to be found in the future."

It is likely that some sort of stone hall or keep once stood on the site of the present tower. Looking down, an 85-foot-deep well can be clearly seen and this is where much of the evidence of medieval occupation has been found. After the Norman Conquest the area around Huddersfield was held by the De Lacey family as part of the Pontefract estate. Brian comments: "In a period in which there was a lot of trouble, in which the Crown was disputed, this was a place from which the whole area could be controlled. When things became more secure it probably fell out of use as a fortification and sometimes towards the end of the 13th Century it became a hunting lodge used sporadically by people from the estate." Artefacts found in the well are now on display at Huddersfield's Tolson Museum.

Show me the way to San Jose, or just Slaithwaite

After the execution of a particularly troublesome Earl of Lancaster the land around here, including Castle Hill, passed first to the Crown and then to the Ramsden family whose ancestral home, Longley Hall, can still be seen from the Hill. In 1920 the Ramsdens sold their estate to the Council making Huddersfield effectively "the town that bought itself."

Even after the De Lacey family fell out of favour people continued to make use of Castle Hill. Brian says: "This was a place where people came for bear-baiting, gambling of various kinds and political rallies. In 1883, during a big weavers strike, there was a big meeting up here with tens of thousands of people." Then there was the public house, originally built in 1810 and later rebuilt in the style of a shooting lodge. The Victoria Jubilee Tower that now gives Castle Hill such a distinctive shape was built later to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. But some things have certainly changed. Brian says: "The Tower cost £3398 originally but in 1960 when they took off the top it cost three times as much to do. When I organised new pointing in 2000 the scaffolding cost even more."

Looking out of the Tower - a place to dreamcatch?

Now Castle Hill receives visitors from every country and in every season. When we visited, despite the coldest of winds, there were people walking their dogs and flying model aeroplanes. As with other such sites around the country the challenge now is to recognise the archaelogical importance of the site and preserve this for future generations while allowing people to get as much pleasure as they can there today. Brian says: "We need to do a lot of work with the erosion that takes place. You get a lot of cold temperatures, lots of wind and rain and the Tower's very exposed. All this needs addressing in a very sensitive way so you don't damage the site. We need to improve the car parking facility and we need to help people understand the site better."

Julian agrees: "There's quite a lot of work to make people aware of what is probably one of the most important sites in Northern England but at the same time conserve the Hill and make it into a working environment. We've got a few volunteers who come up and do a lot of work including dry stone-walling. We made our first brick compost pen yesterday. Everything we do up here, it's hitting that balance between sensitive management and not being draconian. We try to educate people rather than telling them off...It's also important to build up a relationship with the people who live around the Hill. We've got to strike a balance and we are working to putting the Hill first before everybody else."

Huddersfield, the town below the Hill

We asked Julian what he liked best about his job: "It's the opportunity each morning to come up here with a cup of tea and look out over the site and just see what's happening. Every day is different." Brian agrees: "It's nice to see it at different times of the year and in different conditions. It can be wonderful when you are up here by yourself, when you've got driving wind and rain and it just takes you away from it all."

Many people in Huddersfield still like to associate Castle Hill with the Brigantes, a warlike people led by a warrior queen Cartimandua, who lived around these parts at the time Boudicca was taking on the Romans. However, Brian says no evidence has been found to suggest the Brigantes ever made a home on Castle Hill. So if your image of the folk who lived on the Hill is more Fred and Wilma Flintstone than woad-covered warriors then that's your choice. We just don't know. But, as Brian says: "There are lots of myths and legends around this place and all sorts of things are conjured when you hear the wind whistling around the Tower."

While we all want you to have the time of your lives at The Pink Picnic, please remember that this is a historic site and should be treated with care and respect. Please take care not to harm the site in any way and we can keep on returning here to celebrate year after year!