The carnival is over

Bincleaves Green - 14th September 2012

The summer, which made a late comeback this year and for the last three weeks has been hanging on by its fingertips, has slipped away. Blackberries, which are normally ripe and juicy in mid- to late-August, are mostly small and red and unlikely to provide enough fruit for any pies or jam this year.

Today it has been raining steadily for most of the day but it is the first serious rain we’ve had here in weeks. A little while ago, the only things tumbling over the grass were the dogs being exercised up on Bincleaves Green, but now they are joined by browning leaves, swept off their branches by the chilly winds blowing in from the east. The normally calm seas in the shallows of Weymouth Bay are today whipped up into thousands of white horses and the distant hills are shrouded in mist.

I have been extremely busy with work over this period and haven’t had the energy to update the blog – very naughty of me – so I now have quite some updating to do, so here goes with the first report:

Paralympic success
The Paralympics have been, like their sister event, a huge success. Here in Weymouth the beach sports arena, which was created for the Olympics, was re-opened in a slightly modified format, allowing people of all abilities to have a go at accessible sports, including wheelchair basketball and seated volleyball as well as sailing and windsurfing. Such was the success of the two sessions that the local council is considering making the sports arena a regular summer activity.

The main competitive event here, of course, was the sailing. Unlike in the Olympics, Paralympic sailing is one of the few events where men and women compete together and one of the competitions was won by British sailor Helen Lucas – the only female competitor in the race – but a day early. Sadly, the weather was so calm on the last scheduled sailing day that there was no wind for sailing and the decision was taken to award the medals based on the positions at the end of the previous (fourth) day.

Saturday 8th September – the last competitive day of the Games – was a beautiful day under cloudless skies. The town was filled with people enjoying the end of the summer and groups of Morris men, women and children were to be found all over town. They had come from as far as Cornwall and were there as part of the Cultural Olympiad by the Sea programme to celebrate the end of the Paralympic Games.

The following day the Moving Tides procession, postponed from the opening of the Olympic Games due to the appalling weather, took place, featuring over 1,000 performers in costumes of themes ranging from Olympic sailing to Jurassic sea creatures. Unfortunately, Ian and I missed it. The carnival was due to start at 4pm on the Esplanade. We were a little late and on the wrong side of Weymouth Harbour. We keep forgetting that the town bridge (the only working ‘bascule’ bridge in the UK other than London’s Tower Bridge) opens every two hours on the hour to let large boats in and out of the marina, and four o’clock is one of those times. There is a rowing boat ‘taxi’ service that might have helped, but the last one was an hour earlier. We would have been half an hour late and probably missed most of it, so we turned around and walked the long way back home along the harbour and through the Nothe Gardens.

I have since discovered that this carnival is part of the annual Spirit of the Sea Weymouth and Portland Maritime Festival, so we shall be on the Esplanade, in plenty of time, waiting for next year’s procession.