Thousands enjoy Raglan Festival

Around 3,000 people visited Raglan across the weekend for the three day festival which saw the return of the parade through the village.

The float was decorated by three cub groups who each took it in turn to ride along the route which began and finished at Raglan Primary School.

The parade which lasted 30 minutes was led by Rocky, the festival’s mascot and the festival King and Queen from Raglan Primary School who were both nominated by their classmates.

Eleri Rosier, a member of the Raglan Festival committee, said: “It was an absolutely fantastic day on Saturday for our family fun day, the weather was perfect which really helped.

“At one point the field was completely full with around 600 people. It was a mixture of people from elderly to children in the community which is what we wanted.

“The festival went brilliantly, the committee are really chuffed with the response. This is the first time bringing back the festival floats since 1988, we hope that we inspired people to create one for next year.

“It was nice to bring back this tradition, hopefully next year we will have more floats.”

She added: “The parade was started with cannon fire, a resident along the route had a cannon in his back garden. It was great, you don’t hear of many people who own a cannon.”

The big lunch was attended by 400 people and saw community groups including the WI and brownies share a picnic with one another.

Ms Rosier said: “It was lovely to get all the different groups in the community to sit down together.

“The Memory Lane was very popular, we had a marquee where residents brought along their old photos of Raglan and past festivals.”

The festival had a whole host of musical acts performing at the village pubs such as Wyld Bird Seed, Trickster, Shootin’ the Crow, Abertillery Orpheus Male Choir and Crochez Moi, winners of Monmouth’s Got Talent.

There was an evening of traditional Welsh hymn singing, the Gymanfa Ganu at the Baptist Chapel which was in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support.