On the same day that "thousands" attended the Manchester Parade, Bury had it's own. Bury's carnival and parade has been going for a lot longer than the Manchester "rip off" and we decided to attend the Bury one. Unfortunately in recent years the carnival in Bury has been downsized due to increased costs and insurance. The pitiful floats in this years parade (there were only two) had people sat down waving, rather than how they used to be dancing around and throwing out sweets and little toys and things to all the kids lining the parade route.

This post is going to be mostly nostalgic, remembering the better times of Bury Carnival rather than the shell it has become. When I was about 8, the parade used to start up Warmersly Road in Bury near to the park, travel all the way down through Bury town centre towards Castlecroft fields (where the new police station is now in Bury). Once we had watched the parade, we used to go down to the fields and experience all the stalls and such that were setup as part of the celebration. I remember this included a lot of fairground rides, stalls and even rifle ranges setup by the army. This was not a small scale thing, it covered the whole of the fields up towards Burrs country park. I've included a link to a map here so you can see the size of the ground that used to be covered by the funfair and the actual carnival stalls. They also used to have aerial displays and everything. The Old Carnival Grounds

This years paled in comparison with about 15 stalls in total spread up through the Rock along to the centre of "The Rock" shopping complex. It was rubbish, but then, I am older and probably not the target audience for such an event. There are more photos in the full post, and on Bury Lions Carnival in Pictures

This was meant to be the "float" for the Bury Lions.. to me a float involves movement and some form of entertainment, not people sat on a table waving.

A picture trying to catch the little boy drumming along with everyone, he was cute. As you can see, this is the Oldham Scottish Pipe Band - it doesn't seem like Bury has much of a Scottish music scene... I was left wondering if these guys got confused with the Manchester Carnival that was happening on the same day

A dog waving from the Mountain Rescue Ambulance