Appleby-in-Westmoreland is a market town in the Eden district of Cumbria. Every June the town hosts the largest gathering of Gypsies and Travellers in Britain, the renowned Appleby Horse Fair, a Fair granted a Royal Charter by King James II in 1685. Appleby Fair attracts some thirty to forty thousand visitors a year. The horsemen and women of the Romani and Traveller communities come to meet, trade and ride their horses bareback for a symbolic ritual bath in the waters of the river Eden.
