They're Off! The Duck Race: Photo Essay

Our village held it's annual duck race at the weekend. The duck race raises money for the Christmas Lights. It involves quite a lot of work, and is all done by volunteers. This year 2,000 ducks were sold, making enough money to run the Christmas Lights, so our village will be pretty this Christmas, as always! The ducks are on sale for about three weeks before the race, but many are sold on the day.

The plastic ducks each have a number on the bottom, and it is actually the numbers that are sold, not the ducks!

Buy your ducks here! He's quite a character!

People start to gather on the river bank, waiting for the start of the race. Our duck race is very popular, and attracts many visitors!

The ducks are carried in this big blue bag on their journey to the start of the race. My husband Rory is the town crier, and leads the ducks to the bridge from where they will be dropped into the river.

Here the ducks are being tipped into the river to race downstream.                                    

The local canoe club help out, they keep the ducks out of the reeds, and stop them getting caught up in the river bank.

The ducks are being kept on a steady course, towards more canoeists, who will pick out the first past the post.

Almost there! The canoeists are ready to take the winning duck, and the three runners up.

We have a winner!

Then begins the job of collecting the rest of the ducks. the river was calm today, so the job was a fairly easy one, but sometimes when the river is flowing faster it can be quite a frenzy!

Rescueing the stragglers. All the ducks have to be recovered, then counted into bags of 100, and stored ready for next year.

The winner is announced!

 If the winner is present they collect their prize on the day, otherwise they are contacted by phone.

And there you have our bit of exitement for this week!