Another record breaking Festival in 2010

This year we had great weather on Saturday and a damp end to Sunday – one day we will get two great days! However people came in their thousands to enjoy a bigger Festival than ever before. On Saturday the highlight of the day was a fly past by the Spitfire and Hurricane from the Battle of Britain Memorial flight. After our disappointment last year, with them unable to fly due to strong winds, it was a spine tingling moment to see them do several circuits of the Festival Site introduced exactly on cue by a few words from our Prime Minister.....Winston Churchill!

Our selection of musical entertainment was bigger than ever with the premier of the Owlsworld Alternative Stage in the Environment Fair area of the Aquadrome site. This stage provided a colourful mix of original and talented musical artists, ranging from classical musicians, blues, folk, blue grass and festival bands and also showcased performers from the Rrrants Poetry Collective who provided spoken word and comical poetry between the bands. With its organic Cafe this Marquee provided an alternative pace of entertainment to the main Arena stage and we hope to build on this next year.

The main stage opened the Festival entertainment on Saturday with a performance from over 200 singers from the Rock Choir. A great way to start the proceedings and hopefully a popular choice if they can return in a future year. The main stage, the beer tent stage and the Batchworth stage were kept packed with entertainment the whole weekend and as usual we had many more people who would have loved to play than we could accommodate. I think Clive could have filled the main stage twice with all the people on our standby list.

The canal was more packed than we can remember with the largest collection of Historical boats in the South of England this year. Fabian and John also produced a guide to the Historic Boats present at the Festival this year, with the help of kind sponsorship from Carillion. This was a great way for people to learn more about the boats and encourage them to find out more by talking to the dedicated enthusiasts who had brought their pride and joy to display at Rickmansworth.

We also had a great 10th anniversary re-launch celebration for the Roger which provided the Trust an opportunity to demonstrate the success of this project to a number of important guests and also to say thank you to the volunteers who had worked hard to achieve the restoration. We had a record number of boaters, many coming for the first time, and all wanting to come back next year. John Brice is looking to widen the canal to fit them all in.....

On Sunday the heritage train Sarah Siddens was running on the Metropolitan Line all thanks to our friends from the London Transport Museum with a vintage bus link to Batchworth Lock. To close the show on Sunday we were treated to an aerobatics display by a 1930's Bucker Jungman biplane. We are grateful to Bradley and Jones, Funeral Directors, for their sponsorship to make this possible and I am not sure how we will top this next year!

A tired but happy Festival team now go into hibernation for a few months to debrief on how things went and to work out how we can improve for 2011 before starting the whole process again. Remember you too can be part of this team – if you want to be part of the Ricky Festival follow the contact links on the Festival 2011 page and we will see you next year.