I plan to visit the Little Venice canal festival on Sunday (although Granny sends her apologies). Here's the official festival website. This will be my first year with digital photography, and it'll be interesting to see if it'll be any easier for me to record it this way. Especially the traditional illuminated boat procession.
The theme this year is 'Diamonds', 2006 being the Diamond Jubilee of the founding of the Inland Waterways Association. This theme offers great scope for canal boat decoration, for diamonds are an integral part of traditional narrowboat art. There's an interesting mention of the role of the diamond in the excellent Jo Sonja's Online Guide to Decorative painting.
Here's the official 'what it is' of the festival. The official title is Canalway Cavalcade, but I've never found out why they gave it this unusual locution. Perhaps because it merges the idea of the water and the pathway in one.
This was significant in the early days of the festival: until about 1973 the towpath was actually off-limits to the general public, and would-be canal walkers could only press their noses to the gates and look on longingly, like hungry street urchins at a baker's window.
Sorry me again.. Canalway because the canal's towpath when opened to the public was orignally called 'canalway.' You can see one or two of the original canalway signs on lamposts in the area.
The Stort plaques - I was informed by some Lee & Stort boaters the plaques can be obtained from either Little Hallingbury or Stanstead Abotts marinas.
Posted by: Roger | Thursday, 27 April 2006 at 06:53 PM