Thankfully Felixstowe’s Ferry Festival was there to fill the hole left after the downfall of Mansion on the Moon earlier this month.
With live music across the August bank holiday weekend, a thriving beer and cider festival, guest ales at £2 a pint and power boat rides, the four-day event was a blinding success.
Jayne Lindill, 59, who helped organise the festival, said: “It’s been a really good weekend, it’s the first the festival down here and people are hoping it will be the first of many.”
She continued: “The success of a festival is down to local involvement really, it’s quite a simple thing, it’s all about involving local people and making the festival affordable as well.”
The Felixstowe Ferry Sailing Club, St Nicholas Church and the Millennium Green all hosted live music, art displays, craft fairs, dance performances, photography, theatre, beachcombing, hog roasts and picnics throughout the event.
The final day, bank holiday Monday, August 27, was pirate themed with families invited to dress in their finest swash-bucking gear and to get in involved in fighting plastic use by helping to finish building Captain Fanplastic.
Captain Fanplastic is a big pirate head made entirely of non-recyclable plastics created by the children of Kingsfleet Primary School in Felixstowe.
They were inspired to create the seafaring menace by eco-warrior Jason Alexander, who is waging war on plastic and damaging rubbish that ends up on Suffolk’s beaches.
“We still haven’t decided what to do with him now the festival is over,” said Ms Lindill, talking about the rubbish captain.
“The environmental message is very strong from people on the coast, they see what washes up on their beaches all the time and if this festival happened again we would want to promote the same message.”
The festival also features a fantastic array of live performances from the like of Gabby Rivers, Scarecrow and even Jayne Lindill’s own play about the 1953 Suffolk floods.
“It’s the first play I have ever written but it was well received and we had some decent crowds for both performances, hopefully I can take it on tour up the Suffolk coast.”
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