Aldeburgh Carnival Part 1

Every year Aldeburgh plays host to a carnival that takes place in mid-August. A large proportion of Suffolk flocks there and I've been nearly every year I can remember.

This year Josh's best friend Charlie had a house, and invited lots of us to go and stay for a few days, I took far too many photos of the carnival and I can't cut them down because they're all fab, so picture overload!

It's an opportunity for the whole of the town to get together, and everyone takes part, even these lovely ladies, who were very nice about me taking their picture!

The most of then houses all along the highstreet each have a balcony, and if you can get at one these are the best places to watch the parade, no craning our necks to see over people's shoulders for us because luckily, Josh's best friend was renting a house and had invited us to stay and the house was positioned so that we were one of the first to see the floats go past.

Rather exciting stuff.

First came the marching band..

..Who lead the carnival Queen in.

From what I understand, the choosing of the Queen is a bit like Aldeburgh X-Factor, she has to be a good egg and play a role in the community, as well as being easy on the eyes. Yikes.

The crowning was just past the house so we couldn't see it, so we chatted and pointed out costumes and people we knew to each other.

The jelly fish were my favourite costumes, and they bobbed along to the band.

The light house was so cool, the gap is where the driver sits on a quad bike and the effort was amazing!

This was by far my favourite float, the seaside theme was used to create an ice cream van but they handed out ice creams as they went past, one downside of being on the balcony- No ice creams.

After the parade had finished we walked into town to the shops to get supplies and snacks, on our way we got stuck in the middle of a samba performance, the day didn't end here, but that's for another post!