Westbourne's Victorian & Steampunk Tour

Westbourne Village has a habit of leaning into its Victorian bones, and the Great Westbourne Village Victorian & Steampunk Tour is the clearest example of it. The latest edition ran on Saturday 12 September, turning the streets into something out of a steampunk novel for the day, and it is worth keeping on the radar for when it comes around again.

The whole thing is free and family-friendly, which is a good place to start. It began as a small community pub tour and has grown into one of Westbourne's most talked-about events, drawing people in from across Dorset. The organiser, Bart, who is easy to spot in his trademark red hat and cummerbund, has been open about how the event took off because local people and businesses got behind it, and that community spirit is a big part of what makes it work.

On the day, the village's cafés, restaurants, pubs and independent shops all lean into the theme with displays and activities. The Porterhouse, Camden, The Colosseum, Circo Lounge, The Duck, The Westbourne, The Libertine and Chocol8 are among the venues that get involved, and Wessex Cancer Support's Westbourne shop on Poole Road puts on a specially designed Victorian-themed window. Camden keeps things lively with live music during the day, and the Westbourne Rotary hosts a central information point in the Westbourne Arcade where you can pick up raffle tickets and hear about their community work.

For anyone who likes to dress up, the costume side of things is attitude-free, welcoming everyone from a first-time Victorian outfit to a fully realised steampunk ensemble. There is also an adventure trail to keep younger visitors busy, with gold letters to collect and missing artefacts from the late 1890s to track down. The event has a charitable streak too, having raised funds for disaster relief in Nepal, and the new Stop the Press memory junk journal inserts, handmade from repurposed materials, go to charity as well.

If you want to make the most of it, there are optional £5 wristbands that unlock discounts and promotions on food, drinks and shop merchandise throughout the day, but you do not need one to take part. The deals spread across the village are a good example of how much the local trade gets behind the day, from coffee and breakfast offers to discounts at the bookshop and menswear store. The evening rounds off with a pub-to-pub tour, moving from The Libertine through to The Duck and Camden, before closing with a set from The Hollerin' Jimmy Hillbillies, a steam-driven cowpunk, hoedown and dirty blues outfit.

It is a quintessentially Westbourne day, and it works because it plays to the neighbourhood's strengths. The Westbourne Arcade, the Grade II listed building at the heart of it all, was built between 1884 and 1885 and still houses an eclectic mix of gift shops, cafés and boutiques, as well as the Bournemouth Colosseum, the UK's smallest cinema with only 19 seats. The area also has a literary connection: Robert Louis Stevenson lived here between 1885 and 1887, and the remains of his former home, Skerryvore, are marked by a small stone lighthouse. It is a fitting backdrop for a weekend that turns the clock back.