Failure is the Key to Success

The weather this morning didn’t look good for today’s carnival. It was raining first thing and didn’t stop until about 11:30. The floats were due to leave from the council offices at 12:00 noon on their route through the town. We didn’t have to leave much before then as it is only about a minute’s walk to the end of the road, so when the clouds let rip for 5 minutes at about 10 to, it wasn’t a problem. We walked to the end of the road and stood there with our neighbours who had all gone up to see the parade and the rain did stop completely while the parade went past.

The parade was again led by the Harpenden Pipe Band, who were really good. The bubbles in the photo are from the bubble cars behind them. There were a couple of vintage cars with bubble machines attached to the back. The kids loved them, especially the horn on the car. The kids also enjoyed the majorettes who were near the start.

It was only a small parade taking about 20 minutes to go past, but everyone had put a lot of effort into their floats and costumes. Needless to say as soon as it had gone past, the rain started again, so although we stayed dry, anyone further along the route would have got soaked.

Later in the afternoon, we went into town to the carnival. We watched several of the displays and the kids went on the fair rides and climbed over a fire engine. The mountain bike stunt team M.A.D. were really good, keeping us all entertained for 25 minutes.

The ‘Knights of the Crusades’ display was disappointing. The whole set was mimed to a pre-recorded soundtrack, which wasn’t particularly clear anyway. (When we saw knights jousting at the Joust last year, the person introducing was using a radio mic and it was much clearer as well as being more spontaneous).

The Tudor Festival has been moved to 23rd June this year and will also play to the ’900 years of Dunstable’ theme as well as the Tudor theme. This should be a much better time of year than previous years when it has taken place in November.

Thanks to Lyall and jmb for recent comments.

Tags:dunstable carnival,mountain bike stunt team

After looking at the list of categories in my blog, I decided that I needed to add a few more. I have gone back through the posts and added them to the new categories where appropriate. This in theory, would reduce my use of my miscellaneous category ‘General’, but just to prove a point my post about the 900 years of Dunstable is in General. Oh well, never mind.

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Tomorrow is Dunstable’s Carnival. The theme for this year is ’900 Years of Dunstable’.

Dunstable started as a Roman posting station where travellers could change their horses. A settlement grew up on the crossroads of the Roman Watling Street and the older prehistoric Icknield Way. When the Romans left Britain in the 5th Century, the town was abandoned and became overgrown. It lay derelict for centuries and in 1100 was just a crossroads in a forest.

In 1107, work on the creation of the new town, ordered by King Henry 1, at the junction of Icknield Way and Watling Street began. This makes 2007 the 900th Anniversay of the town’s foundation. Dunstable is a market town, with the Royal Charter granted by Henry 1 in 1131. The Priory Church of St Peter in Dunstable is all that remains of the Augustinian priory founded in 1132 by Henry 1 and endowed with the lordship and manor of the town. The priory was destroyed during the dissolution of the monastries, shortly after the anouncement there of the divorce of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, which lead to the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church.

Hopefully the weather will be fine tomorrow and we will get to see the carnival parade as it goes past the end of our road.

Tags:carnival,dunstable,priory church