About the event

Every year, the Inland Waterways Association runs a major event during the summer. In 2011, it's at Shobnall Fields, Burton on Trent, on the Trent and Mersey Canal. For the first time for a long while, it will be from the Friday to the Sunday of the last weekend in July, rather than the Late Summer Bank Holiday.

Like a lot of other volunteers, we'll be there for three weeks, starting on Saturday 16th July. Our main contribution will be editing and producing the daily newsletter which is circulated to the boaters, campers and exhibitors at the Festival, starting on the Thursday before.

Disclaimer

Note: this is an entirely personal account of our time helping to set up and run the Festival. It's not an official IWA site; please use the link above for that.

Friday 6 August 2010

We've done as much as we can for now...

We’ve had another busy day working on the Newsletter, after yet another visit to Waitrose. We’ve also discovered that the only independent butcher in Abingdon doesn’t have a shop any more, you have to go round the back to his wholesale outlet. I’m planning to explore this a bit more tomorrow.

By this afternoon, we’d done as much as we could with the stuff we had waiting for the newsletter, and had written what we can of the stuff we’re doing ourselves. Obviously, some things have to wait for the event, like the report of the Opening Ceremony.

There might yet be the odd further item which may arrive beforehand, but otherwise, we can leave it alone for a few days. This will leave us free to work on the Braidbar quiz tomorrow, so it’s all coming together quite nicely.

This afternoon, we gave ourselves a break by taking a walk up to the lock to buy a couple of EA pump out cards, then looped back down the other side of the river, past the park area and into the Abbey Gardens.

We finished by rewarding ourselves with a Thornton's ice cream apiece (yum) and so back to the boat for a quiet cup of tea. If this post seems a bit short, it might be because I’ve written around 600 words today already, and edited about the same again...

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