Last weekend we went to the West Country, in pursuit of more material for Averil’s website. Bridgwater Carnival came as a bit of a surprise… I know that Carnival parades are big on the continent, but I’ve never seen a float-based parade on this kind of scale anywhere in the UK before. Some of the entries were jaw-droppingly impressive (The tableux/human-statue “Overthrow of The Tzar” – around 6:20 in the vid – being a particular work of art; Youtube doesn’t even start do it justice compared to real life). Makes me wish we had Carnival clubs in this part of the country… building those things looks fun!

The video is just a few of the highlights (i.e: bits where people didn’t get in the way of my camera) – the full parade took about two and a half hours to pass by where we were standing. No wonder all the locals brought chairs with them.

The next day we went to check out the tar barrel rolling at Ottery St Mary… which is a much more olde-worlde / insanely-dangerous / fire-based tradition. The footage from that is my next editing project…