Hear Ye, Hear Ye Renaissance Fair Comes to Russell!

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

Renaissance Fair Comes to Russell!

Gwen Akers

The Ashland Beacon

Russell, Kentucky is going back in time with Ferry Tales, a magical medieval festival on April 25 and 26. Ferry Tales is hosted by Wander Russell: Tourism and will feature magical appearances from princesses, horse and carriage rides, blacksmithing demonstrations, vendors, food trucks and even a jousting tournament!

“We're just hoping to turn downtown Russell into a medieval-style Renaissance weekend that includes princesses and everything else. This will span from Ferry Street, down Belmont Street to Main Street, and then all the way to the Riverfront Park. There’ll be activities going on all throughout downtown,” said Faith Wolfe, Director of Tourism for Wander Russell.

Wolfe began her career with Wander Russell in September, bringing with her tourism experience in Tennessee, Two weeks before last year’s Ferry Tales, Wolfe received a phone call asking her to plan an event around some horse and carriage rides in downtown Russell. From here, Wolf quickly put together the original Ferry Tales–envisioning carriage rides and princesses taking over downtown. Over 500 people showed out last year and they even expanded the event another 2 hours to account for the interest. After this, Wolfe knew it was time to expand this event.  Keeping the carriage rides and the princesses that the community loved last year, this year's festival plans to take things up a notch.

Working with Assistant Tourism Director, Bela Blanton, the two sketched out ideas for what the festival would look like, but everything fell into place at The Great Christmas Wonder event in December 2025. Here, they met a local blacksmith with connections to a professional medieval reenactment group.

“We wanted to bring that to the Russell area and the region around here–bringing more interactive things, such as our jousting tournament that we're going to have with live professional jousting people, live archery and many different vendors,” commented Blanton. “We just wanted to make it more interactive for the community, so that everyone could be involved.”

For the younger guests, there will be tea parties occurring at 3 different times on Saturday, April 25. During the parties, guests can enjoy tea and chat with their favorite princesses. Afterwards, families can stroll down Ferry Street to see blacksmithing demonstrations and even a live jousting tournament and horseback archery by the water.

It’s time to step back into medieval times, visit with friends and make new ones at the upcoming Ferry Tales events. This, however, is just one of many events hosted and planned by Wander Russell, with events such as the first-ever Tri-State Drone Show during Memorial Day weekend.

“I think hosting all these events [and] bringing the community together is really what we want to do, and just show[ing] that we support everybody. We just want everyone to come together and have a great time, no matter what your age is,” explained Blanton.

For more information about Ferry Tales and to RSVP for a tea party, please check out Wander Rusell on Facebook or at their website: https://wanderrussell.org/ferrytales.