Glastonbury Carnival 2016 - The Largest Carnival in the West Country
Officially known as the “Glastonbury & Chilkwell Guy Fawkes Carnival” this annual event has a 150 year old history.
Glastonbury Carnival is one of Somerset’s largest events in the Mendip area. It plays a big part in the UK and especially the South West of England’s Carnival heritage. Read more here.
Originally this was a torchlit event with horse drawn carriages and just as much fun and frivolity. Nowadays it attracts many thousands of spectators. This does bring increasing tourism and it is hard to find accommodation for the Carnival weekend!
“I love Carnival – I was once a Carnival Queen in Cornwall many moons ago…..now there’s a story to be told another day.”
This year's experience was quite wonderful, if not bizarre. Paul and I had invited friends to stay from London. It was their first time to Carnival and they didn’t know what to expect! We dutifully started off in the Pub, which was a rowdy affair and then proceeded to go into the crowd to view the procession near its start in Northload Street.
However the parade of motorbikes that began the procession had passed by and now there was little activity, just lots of people having a wonderfully boisterous time. So we walked to the Indian restaurant (you can take the man out of London, but not London out of the Man!) After ordering our food we continued walking to the start of the parade at the bottom of Northload street. There our friends first saw the magnificent floats with their hundred and thousands of lights. As Ronnie my grandson said last year “ There must be Millions and Millions of blolbs !” He couldn’t come this year, so I’ve written this blog and taken the videos and pictures so that he can see what it was like again.
It was Absolutely Brilliant, so much work had gone into the ideas and design, and the costumes. The carnival club members were so enthusiastic, it was such great fun to watch and be part of.
Dampened by the rain, the first big storm of the winter season “Angus” arrived half way through it we retreated to enjoy our meal. We could still hear the floats from our house, the Daisy Centre, so we still felt connected. Spurred on by our childish delight we went back to view the procession in the High Street. There were still lots of spectators, and the floats were so close, you could touch them, at the very least throw your money at them for charity.
It took us about 10 minutes to realise, that we were, by some strange ‘Glastonbury Moment’ twist, watching the same floats we had seen earlier! It was not until the last one came past us we just had a really big laugh at the Cosmic joke of it.
We had managed to see the magnificently intricate productions along with incredible tableaus, live musical bands, some opera and the beautifully funny costumes. However we only saw the same ones twice! At the beginning and the end of the event.
This did not deter our fun, we had a great evening and then of course I bored everyone with other funny and bizarre experiences when I was Carnival Queen, aged 16 in Roche and Truro. I was so intrigued to find out who was the Glastonbury Princess and I found this list of previous years…Big Shout out to the Glastonbury Queens of Old..
For more pictures and information do have a look at the official Glastonbury Carnival Website and their Fundraising Page.
I hope you enjoy the video and photos, please share this post to tell your friends about this spectacular event.
