Soapranos

Soapranos is the quirky heart of Boomtown Fair, Hampshire's answer to festival culture that's part art installation, part immersive theatre, and entirely bonkers in the best way. You're walking through a soap opera set - think EastEnders meets fever dream - complete with actors in character, plot twists unfolding across multiple scenes, and the kind of theatrical chaos that makes you actually want to engage rather than just scroll past.

The whole thing runs during Boomtown Fair's festival weekend each August, so it's not something you pop to on a random Tuesday. Admission comes as part of your festival ticket, which isn't cheap, but you're getting a three-day pass to the entire event. Expect to lose at least a couple of hours here if you're into immersive theatre - some people do the whole thing in thirty minutes, others get completely drawn into storylines and emerge three hours later looking bewildered.

It works brilliantly for adults who fancy something a bit different from the usual festival fare, though older teens will get a kick out of it too. Small kids will probably just find it confusing. The whole experience plays nicely with staying at one of the nearby caravan parks - Winchester Morn Hill is barely a mile away, making it an easy base if you're going for the full festival weekend. You could easily spend a couple of days exploring Winchester itself between festival sessions, though that's the point really - Boomtown's deliberately removed from normal life.