Dragon Boating (without a boat!) 2019
It all started on friday 21st June 2019..........
Into the Wild joined up 4 months ago to do the dragon boat festival for 3 whole days. I didnt know what to expect as i had only done 1 day events such as bingley show and cliffe castle so this was a huge undertaking and i had to use every avaliable member of staff!!
The night before the festival
the night before was busier than i could have imagined! we closed 1 h0ur early in order to get tot he pitch we had been allocated as early as possible. Once we had entered into roberts park we were shown to our pitch and this couldnt have been any more centralised if we had planned it ourselves (unless we were actually competing!) Out came the gazebo, the fence and the decorations!! The gaebo itself was a bit of a challenge as we had quite high winds and had to cable tie it down to grates in the floor as well as secure it to the wall behind us!! once we had stabilised the gazebo everything was fairly smooth going and we finished the partial set up within the hour, we just had to go home and prya our gazebo did NOT blow away over night.......
Day 1
Up bright eyed and bushy tailed raring to go, we set off to day 1! we got on site, got to our pitch to set up....... WE STILL HAD A GAZEBO!!!!! WHOOP!
So we finish setting up for the day and get ready for the influx of people to join us........
it was a slow day. On a huge positive though we got to meet a lot of teachers and members of staff as well as students from a variety of schools across bradford. This meant we could have a chat and explain we come into schools to help educate on specific areas of the curriculum such as evolution, habitats and geneology. This had a lot of interest and a lot of people took our leaflets and letters to promote.
Massive thanks on day one to Kayleigh, Cathryn and Khloe on day one!!
Day 2 and 3
we had been warned that the saturday and sunday were going to be busy with crowds of up to 40000 people, they werent wrong!!! from the minute we had arrived on site on saturday to the moment we ceased trading on sunday it was non stop!
During these 2 days we had upwards of 500 children and adults come and visit us and meet our animals. We had members of the army competing within their groups to see who could hold and interact with the 'scariest animal', we had members of the public overcoming fears of not only tarantulas but snakes as well.
I would like to take this oppertunity to thank every single person that took a leaflet from us, handled the animals, spoke to staff and those who just generally came to say hello to us! without your support we wouldnt be here!!
Unfortunately we didnt get chance to see very much of the actual racing but we did get to meet members of staff from pulse 1 including rosie madison and danny mylo. Also Norman, Marmite and Cosmos were allowed to join them on stage and interact with the crowds.
Huge thanks to those who posted on instagram with the hashtag #followthedinosaur.... for those of you who didnt manage to see, Norman the sulcata tortoise spent the weekend attached to the biggest dinosaur helium balloon we could find just so we knew where he was!!! was a very amusing site!
Massive thanks and appreciation to the following members of staff who joined us for our manbic 2 days..... Kayleigh, Emily, Khloe, Marcus, Seb, Tabby, Jodie and Ste! without you i dont know what we would have done.
The following animals joined us on the days of the dragon boat.....
Olive the Bosc
Cosmos the Nosy Be Panther Chameleon
Pluto the Royal Python
Europa the Female Red Bar Panther Chameleon
Norman the Sulcata Tortoise
Reggie and Marmite the Burmese Pythons
Titan the Blue Tongued Skink
Titanium the Tarantula,
A Millipede
A Baby Horsefield Tortoise