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Britain’s Got Talent star wows Skipton festival crowd

The May Day Bank Holiday weekend celebrations in the town’s canal basin were organised by Pennine Cruisers.

Manager Zoe Clarke said: “The festival was a huge success, we are really pleased with the impressive number of visitors we received on site over the three days.

“We’ve had lots of positive feedback and we hope the general public enjoyed the event as much as the organisers and boats attending did.”

The event was attended by just short of 100 visiting canal boats and boaters and visitors were treated to three days of live music and family attractions, helped along by glorious sunny weather for most of the weekend. The Saturday night boaters’ ball was a hoot and Sunday evening’s night time boat parade was a moving and enchanting sight.

An appearance from local celebrity Martin Crofts, who is in the semi-finals of ITV1’s Britain’s Got Talent, added excitement for the crowd. Martin mingled with the
crowd and signed autographs for well wishers to the competition.

This year’s theme was ‘Great Britain’, with boaters dressing their boats and barges with ‘the best of British’. The best dressed boat competition was won by Mr and Mrs Middlemas from canal boat Raven, who this year covered their boat with a 3D map of Britain with hand-made decorations representing everything from a South Wales colliery to Nessie on the Loch, not forgetting the Leeds Liverpool Canal with a five-
rise lock.

The event costs many thousands of pounds to stage each year and the organisers are now looking to find backers and raise funds so that next year’s Waterways Festival can go ahead.