Parade seekers needn’t limit their search to Bristol and Glocester.

They can also consider heading to Cumberland, where The Arnold Mills Fourth of July Celebration starts with a 9 a.m. four-mile road race at North Cumberland Fire Station, 50 Arnold Mills Road. The parade steps off at 11 a.m. on Nate Whipple Highway –– Route 120 –– near the North Attleboro line, and ends at Abbott Run Valley Road and Nate Whipple Highway.

There is also a 1 p.m. concert on the village green in front of Arnold Mills United Methodist Church.

The Arnold Mills parade had its beginnings in the same concept of “Ancient and Horribles” as did Glocester, according to the parade Web site. The site describes the “ancients and horribles” more broadly as grass-roots happenings that “highlighted the love of the American people of all things ‘wild and wonderful.’ ” The first recorded Arnold Mills parade was July 3, 1927.

The Journal reported last year that the Arnold Mills parade is not built around political satire the way the Glocester parade is. Instead it shares some of the Bristol’s parade’s characteristics.

This year’s Arnold Mills parade theme is “Hope for the Future.”

There is online registration available for the parade at http://arnoldmillsparade.com/

roadrace-register. There is a $10 fee for pre-entry, which is by July 1. For parade entrants who register the day of the parade, the entry fee is $12.

The Arnold Mills Parade Association in 1994 began giving awards to parade participants: eligible are costumed walkers and bicyclists.

— Michael P. McKinney