The Thames Festival 2011

When we arrived in our riverside apartment on the side of the Thames on a grey January day we had no idea just how amazing it would be.....the river is like a conveyor belt of entertainment. During the day it's the tourist boats pointing out the sights and at night it's the party boats showing people a good time. However come September and the Thames steps it up a gear and hosts it's own festival.

It was by chance that we discovered it was holding a parade by Victoria Embankment and although Laura couldn't make it I went to see what it was all about. I arrived at Temple underground station and wound my way through the crowd until I found a perfect viewing spot. With a camera in one hand and my phone videoing in the other I was ready to capture the experience- little did I know that night time photography would be quite so difficult!

As the parade started I was blown away by the sound of drums leading the way and what followed can only be described as the weirdest parade I have ever seen- giant skeletons, skeleton horses, rollerskating luminous kids, go-go dancers, aliens, turtles, meercats, dancers from all over the world and my personal favourite a mouse doing the locomotion with frogs (I think that's what they were?!?). The music never stopped and I loved it - and it's already in the diary for next year :)

As if the parade wasn't enough when we woke up on Sunday there was an unusually high amount of boats on the river...after an hour of seeing small rowing boats battling the tide we googled events of the Thames and found out that we were witnessing  'The Great River Race, London's River Marathon, is a spectacular boat race up the River Thames that attracts over 300 crews from all over the globe'   so we pulled up a chair, balanced an umbrella (well it is England) and watched as big boats, little boats, boats with drums, boats with flags and boats that just looked lost rowed past us for hours. I don't think many people get to say they wake up to that!