How it worked out ...

To my surprise, my voice recovered after a week of absence.
When Ian and I met up round about 19.00, to watch the steam parade for the Erewash Steam and Country Show, my voice was almost normal.

The show is now held for three days, and on the Saturday evening the more able vehicles form a parade through the centre of Long Eaton. The parade was just as in the past 4 or 5 years since the show came to West Park. All the small steam engines go by the shortest route to the old market placce, and congregate.

Then a convoy sets out by road to make its way to the centre of town from the park. This involves the vehicles climbing up over the Derby Road canal bridge. As this is the most dramatic part of the outward journey, we stand on the bridge, and take the occasional photo. This year there seemed to be fewer spectators, so no need for us to jockey for position.

Here you see three quite different vehicles: a steam road roller, followed by a vintage lorry and an ex London Routemaster double-decker bus, all heading up onto the canal bridge. In the far distance you can see more smoke from steam vehicles.

The parade takes a long time to pass, as it rarely goes at more than walking pace. As the road is still open to normal traffic, the parade is interspersed with ordinary traffic too. Taking photos is hard as the traffic on our side of the road is flowing at normal speed, which usually seems to be the 30 mph speed limit. Hence delights such as this:

Picture to follow when Blogger allows!

The steam parade then backs up just before the Green, until the roads are clear for the vehicles to travel round two roundabouts on their way to the High Street.

Another pic soon I hope.

A small boy now has his chance to "drive "the family tractor! Once parked on the High Street, people get a chance to see vintage vehicles , many steam powered, up close.

We walk along and look at them before ducking into the Twitchell Inn for a beer. Our walk back home follows the returning parade. This year I was cycling, and had the fun of overtaking many steam vehicles as they climbed up over the Tamworth Road canal bridge. By this time the water pistol battles between vehicles were raging, but I got home reasonably dry.