Marsden Fire Festival

Last Friday, we drove up to Marsden in West Yorkshire, to stay for the weekend and attend the annual (and now famous) 'fire festival' which takes place on the Saturday evening. We went there last year and because it was so much fun, we decided to go back. The weekend was marked with very cold weather and the threat of snow, which it did for most of Saturday afternoon and evening. We got there late afternoon on Friday, and having found our town centre accommodation ok, we had time to have a quick walk (wrapped up well!) around the town and take some photos, and buy a few bits from the local health food / greengrocer shop. The home-
made wholemeal multi-grain bread was fantastic! Our place was a converted ground floor studio apartment that over looked the canal - very handy for the town centre, only five minutes walk away down the canal.


After an easy morning, we spent some of Saturday afternoon on a walk around the town with the local walking group. Unfortunately this was cut short due to the very cold and snowy weather, so we didn't make it up to the top of the hills which would have liked to have done. Still, it was nice to walk along the canal in the other direction to what we had been used to, and then to loop around along the bottom of the hills back to the town centre. The hills looked impressive in the snow. Thank goodness for walking boots! Also fun was avoiding the very inquisitive dog that happened to be with our group.

After dinner, it was out again for the Fire Festival. The locals organise this to celebrate the pagan ritual of 'Imbolch' (which marks the unofficial start of spring, or rather the return of the sun and the start of plant growth.) Its an absolutely wonderful event; the atmosphere produced by the large crowd, the pagan drumming, the long fire-lit procession, the fire twirling demonstrations, and then the 'show' part, where Jack Frost and his evil minions fight The Green Man for 'supremacy of the Earth' before the fire works go off. Jack, of course, represents winter and darkness, where as the Green Man represents Spring, the Earth, light etc. The people dressed up in those two extravagant costumes do have a bit of a fisty-cuffs at one point as well.
Memorable moment...the very noisy little girl who was an enthusiastic Jack Frost fan, who shouted in her Yorkshire accent her support throughout the show. For instance, "Jack Frost! We know yu-lose, but we-want yu-to win!" The amazing occurrence was that during the show, after the Green Man won his little boxing match and chased Jack off, it actually stopped snowing!
Some pictures of the event can be found here.

Thankfully it didn't snow at all overnight, so it was easy to clear the car on Sunday morning. Also, the ice on the roads wasn't that bad and the sun was shining so our drive home was pleasant. We stopped off in Huddersfield on the way back to do a supermarket run, and to meet up with a friend who I hadn't seen for some years. A great weekend!