Events in 2025

Plans came together for a number of events in 2025.

The Harrogate Spring Flower Show

  • For the Harrogate Spring Flower Show in April 2025, HIP designed, built, and planted a Creative Border, focussing on the town’s twinning with Bagnères de Luchon. This showcased Luchon and its many and varied attractions against a stunning painted backdrop of the snow-capped Pyrenees which are such a feature of the view from the main street in the town itself.
  • At the Spring Flower Show, the Creative Borders are effectively a small show garden contained within one raised bed. Ours was designed and built by members of HIP, finding gardening skills they didn’t know they had! It was a great attraction, visually exciting with great planting, fun for people to see and stop to discuss, and interesting for children (with moving water and models including a railway station!). Unusually for these creative borders, we manned ours throughout the show, talking to anyone and everyone who passed by, which added a lot. Visitors were interested in both the twinning and the horticulture, and it was even featured by a well-known gardening blogger.
  • A worthy award winner, gaining the top 5 Star award for its category from the Show judges – a considerable achievement in itself. Well done to the team, and many thanks to our friends at the wonderful Horticap charity who helped us with selecting plants.

French visitors

  • We were honoured that a visit to Harrogate by three prestigious representatives from Luchon came to fruition in April 2025. Letters were exchanged at civic level, and the visit included the Deputy Mayor of Luchon and two other key people from the town who have facilitated our visits there in recent years. It coincided with the Spring Flower Show and the French guests were able to visit and admire our Creative Border, and be entertained as VIP guests at the show. The new railway station in Luchon was being officially opened at that time, so the Deputy Mayor of Luchon was able to declare “open” our model station at the same time!
  • Thanks go to the Spring Flower Show and its organisers, and we are also very grateful for the interest and support shown by the Harrogate Charter Mayor and the locality grant we received to help facilitate the visit.
  • Our French visitors were also given tours of the town and the nearby countryside, and attended a dinner with the HIP trustees. HIP had put together a full programme of entertainment and hospitality for these guests during their stay, and it was a great pleasure to welcome them to our town. An unexpected surprise for them was a visit to the Harrogate based Escape Line Memorial Society which holds records and items from World War 2, when the escape lines in France took people across the Pyrenees, including near Luchon – which is the focus of much attention in that area of France to this day with a dedicated museum, commemorative walks and trails.

Events in Luchon

  • We have been very impressed over the last year or so with the efforts made by Luchon to update and upgrade three key facilities in the town. These were:
    • the extension of areas of the “Therme” – the spa and treatment centre – where additions include modern spa facilities and a lovely rooftop pool,
    • the complete refurbishment of the cable car from the town centre up to the ski and mountain top resport of Superbagnères, with larger cars and new equipment, and
    • the resurrection of the railway line down the length of the valley, and the reopening of the station in Luchon, which gives Luchon back its railway access and connects the town back into the national railway network.
  • Luchon once again held its annual Fetes des Fleurs festival of flowers and music in August 2025, with HIP facilitating Harrogate representation once again by the Tewit Silver Band. In recent years the Tewit Silver Band has become a star attraction performing in the parade and staging a series of other concerts which have ‘wowed’ the locals.
  • The Tour de France 2025 also heavily featured Luchon once again this year, this time with a mountain top finish at the fabulous Superbagnères ski resort above the town. The Chair of HIP was invited by the Mayor of Luchon to visit and watch at the finish – an unforgettable experience – HIP is very grateful for the hospitality extended.

ANZAC Commemoration and Wellington Connections

  • The annual Anzac Day Commemoration took place on Sunday 27 April 2025, at the Stonefall Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Harrogate. Maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, this is one of the largest CWGC sites in the North of England. Buried at Stonefall are 97 Royal Australian Air Force crew, and 23 Royal New Zealand Air Force crew – four of whom came from Wellington, Harrogate’s sister city. There are also over 660 Canadian aircrew, one of whom came from Barrie, Ontario, which is also twinned with Harrogate. After the Second World War, visitors came to Harrogate to visit their war dead, and one couple moved permanently from New Zealand to Harrogate to be near their son. The links which grew then remain important today.
  • The ANZAC day commemoration was once again led by Kate Spencer, who is HIP’s New Zealand representative. We are delighted that Kate has now established a separate charitable organisation dedicated to running the ANZAC event – ANZAC Remembrance CIO. This is will secure the future of this growing and officially recognised event in Harrogate. We are very proud to have been involved with its inception and will continue to give it our full support in future – this underpins our twinning link with Wellington and is itself important for our town. We are also very grateful for the help and support provided by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in this regard.
  • In December 2025 Kate Spencer, acting as HIP’s representative and also as Chair of the separate organisation which now organises Harrogate’s ANZAC commemoration, visited Wellington. She attended the Mayor’s offices meeting senior staff and exchanging gifts on behalf of Harrogate’s Town Mayor Chris Aldred, discussing how the links might develop in the future, and inspecting the Ceremonial Mace made by Ogden’s Jewellers of Harrogate and presented to Wellington City Council in 1953, which carries Harrogate’s crest and is used at Council meetings in Wellington to this day. Here is Kate’s report on the visit: https://harrogatetwinning.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/report-on-meeting-with-wcc.pdf https://www.anzacremembrancecio.org/wellington-harrogate

Canadian connections

  • Along with our friends in Harrogate’s twin of Barrie in Ontario, we marked Sir Robert Barrie Day on 7 June 2025, and Canada Day 1 July 2025. Admiral Sir Robert Barrie – after whom Barrie is named – has local connections and is buried in Ripley, just north of Harrogate.
  • Earlier in the year, a group of students from Harrogate College visited the Georgian College in Barrie, with a reciprocal visit by students from the Georgian College in March 2025 to colleges in both Leeds and Harrogate. The Dean of International Education and Development at Georgian College was also in the UK at that time and visited Harrogate during their visit – we were really delighted to meet her and she was home hosted and given a whistle stop tour of the town and nearby locations by members of HIP.
  • We also welcomed an ex-Mayor of Barrie who was in England with his wife and made time to come back to Harrogate – they had visited before in a more official capacity. We were able to renew old friendships and offer hospitality and home-hosting, and take them to see parts of the area they had not seen.

Lest We Forget

  • In December 2025 we again supported the annual Candlelit Christmas Remembrance at the Stonefall CWGC Cemetery, where a short memorial service takes place on a Sunday afternoon with a candle being placed on every grave. Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and other nationalities – everyone gets a candle and has their name said out loud.
  • A very poignant ceremony, especially when the light fades slowly and the candles seem to get brighter.

Other initiatives

  • We also continued to work on some longer term initiatives, including exploring opportunities for vocational training exchanges, in particular with Montecatini.
  • Other work continues and there are indications that our team’s previous efforts to press for Harrogate to have welcoming town signs which recognise the twin towns / sister cities – so common on the edge of many other towns and villages across the land – may at last be coming to fruition.