Apologies for not mentioning this year’s Largs Viking Festival sooner, and giving anyone interested, but unfamiliar, better opportunity to make a visit. Since I can’t make the trip this time round, it wasn’t in my mind, and it was only noticing the date that reminded me of the omission.

There are lots of events on during the festival, it started on Saturday, August 30, with a parade through the streets of Largs, official opening and lots of fun activities and displays. During the following week, a Viking Village on the promenade populated by the Vikings where you can learn more about the how the Vikings used to live and concludes with the grand finale - the symbolic re-enactment of the battle along with boat burning and fireworks on Valhalla Day at The Pencil monument - on Saturday, August 6, 2008.

Our absence might lead to the success of the event, especially the re-enactment and fireworks, as our occasional visits have always been ruined by the arrival of dreadful weather. Last time, it took over half an hour for the the participants to get the beacon fire to light and burst in a wild… smoulder. It was almost funny as the local Fire Brigade was in attendance - no doubt due to some cowering minion that that had been obliged to carry out a Health & Safety Risk Assessment, and determined that a burning straw bale on the Largs shore half a mile away from the town was likely to cause the Great Fire of Largs, and they’d be held liable. Doesn’t really help the atmosphere, having a big red fire engine following the parade - somebody needs to get a grip.

There’s also the aspect that the place is so damp that the outbreak of fire from a spark has to be one of the most unlikely results of the firelight parade - a few years ago we never even had the parade. After waiting for over two hours, the word was finally passed down that the Vikings were’nt coming, having been flooded out of their camp site the previous night due to torrential rain. They’d tried their best to pull things together for the procession along the front, but eventually had to admit defeat at the hands of the Scottish weather.