Whit Friday

2012.06.01

First contest of the afternoon, in Audenshaw, and the sun even came out.

Only 25 players are allowed to participate in the static contest march so Ian stood down for this contest. I caught this shot as he stood listening, deep in thought.

Contest no.2 in a pub garden in Droylsden

The locals take their brass band contests (and their beer!) very seriously...

Friary's bass drum has seen better days.

Someone from another band stopping briefly to check out the opposition.

Marching through Broadoak.

As a band from Surrey this is their favourite Lancashire street. I took this photo last year too but it was only afterwards we realised that we'd included a traffic cone. The cone was carefully removed before we re-staged the shot this year!

A subtle clue as to where the band should stand!

Make sure you get the spelling right!

By the time we reached Upper Mossley there was some beautiful warm evening sunshine.

Watch those fingers go! These particular fingers and notes belong to Tom, the band's soprano cornet player.

Some of the banner holders were very young - this girl led the band down to Stalybridge Labour Club.

Chris, the band's Principal Euphonium

Totting up the scores at Stalybridge Celtic football ground. These folks were well prepared against the chilly evening air.

The trombones chat before the penultimate contest of the evening at Heyrod.

With today being Whit Friday that could only mean one thing – time for Friary Guildford Brass Band to travel north for the Whit Friday Marches. This event, sometimes dubbed the greatest free show on earth, takes place on the outskirts of Manchester every year, with around twenty five villages each holding their own brass band contest. Last year Friary managed to play in six different villages and this year we were aiming for even more. Hundreds of bands take part, travelling between the contests by coach, and it’s not unusual for over fifty bands to play in each village. As luck would have it we had an excellent bus driver (unlikely the directionally challenged one we had last year!) who transported us efficiently between villages. The queues of band waiting to play were shorter than last year too and this meant we managed to play in nine villages this time. It takes a few days for all the individual contest results to be published but the band were delighted to discover that they’d come fourth at the Heyrod contest – no mean achievement when they were playing against some top notch northern bands. Add to that some lovely warm sunshine (again, a big improvement on the rain we had last year) and it was a fun, if exhausting, evening.