Winter Droving

It was Penrith's fourth Winter Droving Festival today. A parade of giant paper lit-up animals, people in animal masks, people bearing flame torches. Lots of people taking part. Lots of people on the streets watching. Lots of music. Town organizations making their own lanterns.

In short: a great event for a rural, farming community, far surpassing the old turning on of the Christmas lights where drinking and silly string were the memorable things as we attempted to keep our shops open for the evening.

I'm not saying there won't be a mess to clean up tomorrow, but it had that feel-good factor about it.

My choice for a blip out of 170 shots? Well, I've done the big animal lanterns in previous years, the sort of thing The Man has done this year, so I chose the Penrith Churches' lantern to just say a bit more about Christmas and to give us some hope in a week when some of us have been shocked by the USA election in a year when some of us may be worried about the effect of Brexit.

The full quotation: "Jesus - Light of the World, shine upon us". If it had been a better photo I might have used it for my Christmas card.