Raking the Moon

Today was the Slaithwaite (pronounced Slawait) Moonraker festival. The legend goes that some smugglers were using poles to push contraban up the canal when the local constabulary caught them, they claimed they we trying to rake the moon out of the water.

The locals celebrate by creating lanterns out of canes and tissue paper and parading through the village. This evening I heard that there were almost 3000 people. It was a great couple of hours, and the locals are really warm and welcoming.

Some of the other shots can be found on flickr. This years theme was the lunar landings (40 years ago). There were lots of rockets, and landing modules etc, but my favourite was the Clanger (you have to be a certain age).