It is an annual parade (with lit-up floats) which tours around the county at several towns on different nights, all around Guy Fawkes Day. It's unique to this area of the region, and it's a competition, so clubs spend the year building floats to enter them into each parade to compete for nightly and then overall prizes.
There are other people involved to raise money for charity, like these firefighters:
But mostly it's the competitors, on floats, or performing as they walk, and more than anything, it's BRIGHT:
This is Mark, completely lit up by a passing float - this is at night, with no flash at all:
The floats are themed, and fall into different categories, and they all have music, so it's loud, too. It's pretty much like Las Vegas on wheels, in Somerset.
They go all out within the group's chosen theme, including the people who drive the floats:
And so you can get a bit more of the full experience, here's a video of one of them. This is actually of the joint-overall winner of the competition. Just a warning - at one point I flip the camera on its side (I forgot I was videoing and the problems it would cause. We could edit it around, but it's way too much trouble for such a short clip!). But I think you'll get the idea of what it's like - though watching it on video doesn't quite give you the full smack of light and sound of the passing floats!
We imagine Danielle's arrival must have been much the same, just without the fire.
4 comments:
Wow.
Who builds these things?
Apparently there are things called "carnival clubs" and they raise money and spend the entire year building them.
I think there are a handful of clubs that tend to win year after year and I'm sure that some of it must come out of community involvement - it's something for people in the same village or town to come together to do. They also have "junior carnival clubs" so I guess they also start them young...
I have no idea how much a single float costs, though...
Wow, that's some kinetic float!
Does the parade last long? How many floats?
It lasted a loooong time. I'm not sure how many floats - I didn't really count. A news story I was looking at suggested there were 40 floats - but that probably includes the really big ones and some of the smaller ones from junior clubs. There are also people in costume walking along which are separate from floats. They also had a marching band, complete with glockenspiel, and the fire fighters.
We were a bit further down the route, and the floats probably started getting to us at about 7:30 or so and then we finally gave up at about 10 or 10:30 - which wasn't the end, but it was getting there...
Post a Comment