Maidstone row-row-rows their boats for the town's annual river festival

KentOnline / KMTV

The traditional celebration raised money for charities like Heart of Kent Hospice, with thousands of people coming down to the event.   Henry Luck reports.

Transcript

00:00Hundreds of boats took to the River Medway to celebrate the Maidstone River Festival.

00:06This time of the year gives boat lovers a chance to sink their jaws into racing

00:13and showing off their amazing vessels.

00:15Well the river in Maidstone it's obviously its biggest asset and then we come down here and we

00:20make the most of it because we're from the high level bridge to Loch Meadow so we cover the main

00:24sound centre bit of the river. The Firmin family is one of our biggest sponsors. Maidstone Boer Council

00:31have got involved this year which has been utterly excellent.

00:35And of course behind me is Maidstone's River Medway and as its name suggests it stretches all the way

00:42here right to Medway and it served many purposes throughout history from trade to being the stage

00:50of naval battles. But the event also served the purpose of raising money for charities

00:57across the county. I think it's amazing and it's so everybody's joining in everybody's happy and

01:05so so good so good. The festival has supported the Heart of Kent Hospice for many years and we're

01:11extremely lucky that everyone in the community is willing to support us because the work everyone

01:17does at the hospice is so vital to the local community here. The Mayor of Medway was also

01:23there to deliver flags and find the best decorated boats from pirates to even a snowman. Great fun,

01:31I've been doing it for years and I love it. It's the highlight of my year. When I came to the River

01:38Festival many years ago we won Best Dress Boat and I didn't even know there was a Best Dress Boat.

01:44I'm having a really great time. Always a good day down here at the festival. One group managed to win

01:51the raft race for two years in a row and shared the secret of their scallywagging success. We all worked

01:59together to make the raft to the design that we'd written up and we had six good people on the raft to

02:05make the raft go along as fast as it did so it all worked out well. We did. We did well. We did really well.

02:13We worked as a team, won as a team and we're going to celebrate as a team later. The celebrations finished

02:22with a firework display at Fremlin Walk making a merrily merrily time for those involved. Henry Luck for KMTV

02:31in Maidstone

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