Bagpipe Weekend 2025

Name: Bagpipe Weekend 2025
Start: 2025-02-21T16:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-02-23T16:00:00+00:00
Location: Halsway Manor

Friday 21 Feb 4pm — Sunday 23 Feb 4pm, 2025

To make a booking enquiry please complete the form below. We will contact you to confirm availability and complete your booking.

Course Enquiry

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Pricing

Full board per person (tuition, activities, all meals & accommodation):

£330 – single occupancy ensuite room/cabin
£285 – sharing an ensuite room/cabin
£285 – single occupancy non-ensuite room (limited availability)
£225 – sharing non-ensuite room

Camping per person (tuition, activities, all meals):

£215

Non Resident (tuition, activities, all meals except breakfast):

£200

Get a closer look at the accommodation options here.

Our popular Bagpipe workshop weekend returns in 2025, running alongside the Hurdy Gurdy Weekend, in a frenzy of reeds, drones and buzzing things! Our thanks to the Bagpipe Society for their support of our bagpipe events.

You’ll need to select your level (beginner or intermediate/advanced) and will be working with the same tutor over the whole weekend. Outside the workshops, there will be plenty of opportunity to socialise with the other tutors and participants not in your group.

For an extra £65, participants can stay until Monday morning, including supper and B&B. Please enquire when booking.

Who is it for?

Beginners’ Course with David: This is a course for complete beginners. You will be finding out how the instrument works, posture, tuning, basic techniques, and simple repertoire to enjoy when learning to play. Most of the learning will be by ear with music scores provided to support our learning. We will aim to have a bit of fun too!

Instruments will be available for course participants to borrow. You will need to let us know when booking if you’ll require a loan instrument.

Intermediate/Advanced Course with Isabelle: This workshop is dedicated to everybody who wants to make music out of the bag! There’ll be a focus on technique – rappels, vibratos and other finger gymnastics – but musicality will be the main aim.

The Team

We’re sorry to say that Rémi Decker can’t join us in February but delighted that David Faulkner is able to take his place on the team.

David Faulkner has been playing pipes for over 25 years with groups such as the Eel Grinders and Jon Swayne’s Zephyrus, and performs regularly as a duet with accordionist Steve Turner. He has toured in Europe, Canada and America and taught piping courses in the UK and abroad and has worked as a community musician for nearly 20 years.

Isabelle Blô trained as a classical percussionist specialising in traditional music & dance from central France . A multi-instrumentalist Isabelle plays the French bagpipes, the hurdy-gurdy, the diatonic accordion and the chromatic accordion. She has also organised music & dance masterclasses in France, Great-Britain, Belgium and Switzerland.

The Bagpipe Society was formed in 1986 to bring together players, makers, researchers and people who love the bagpipes. They’ve been a great support to Halsway in running this bagpipe workshop weekend over the years – thank you! It’s a great resource for pipers everywhere – check out their website here: www.bagpipesociety.org.uk

Unless otherwise specified, our midweek courses check-in from 4pm on a Monday and check out by 10am on Friday, and our weekend courses check in from 4pm on a Friday and depart on Sunday by 4pm. Dinner on the first night is usually at 6.30pm, and in general, no formal teaching or introductory sessions take place until after this.

Enjoy the area, bring a friend, share a room, & save money

You can book on a course at Halsway and bring a friend who can explore the area while using Halsway as a base for meals and accommodation. Halsway Manor is in the Quantock Hills (England’s first designated National Landscape (formally AONB). We’re just minutes away from the West Somerset Railway (Britain's longest steam railway), a short drive or bus ride from Somerset’s Jurassic coast (ideal for fossil hunting), and surrounded by dramatic scenery and changing landscapes, from the wild hills of Exmoor to the flat expanse of the Somerset Levels.