Skipton & The Dales
Water way to enjoy bank holiday!
Thousands of people are expected to flood into Skipton this Bank Holiday weekend for the Waterway Festival.
This year's theme is the Olympics and one of the high points of the three-day event will be a raft race.
It will take place in the Leeds-Liverpool canal basin on Sunday where teams of up to six people and a skipper will compete in vessels constructed by themselves.
The crews must ride on, and not in, the rafts which can be powered by any method as long as it is manual.
The winning team will receive a day at Coniston Hotel, Coniston Cold, near Skipton, which will include including handling falcons, lunch and clay pigeon shooting.
It is the seventh annual festival and last year it attracted about 10,000 people. Dozens of boat owners and their vessels, mostly narrowboats and many decorated, are expected to sail into the canal basin and some have been arriving over the past few days.
Sunday will also see a spectacular illuminated boat display in which 40 vessels will set off from the Rendezvous Hotel at Snaygill and cruise into the canal basin arriving about 9.15pm.
Organiser Ian Clarke, of Pennine Boats, said: "It's a fantastic display. People make a big effort to decorate and light up their boats. It's a sight to be seen.
"I think we're on line to attract more people than we have ever done. We are expecting 85 boats, 22 more than we had last year.
"And I think we will attract as many people over the three days as we did last year- I'm still getting people ringing up to ask about it and wanting to come.
"We are very pleased with the response. It has been very hard work but very satisfying - people get a lot out of it."
Entertainment during the three event from tomorrow until Monday includes a pipe band from Bradford, a skiffle group, majorettes and on Sunday evening a display of drumming and fire throwing.
For more information contact (01756) 795478 or e-mail info@penninecruisers.com.
2:16pm Friday 2nd May 2008
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