The Moving Mevagh Forward organised Carrigart St. Patrick’s Day Parade turned out to be a great success with huge crowds and a significant increase in the number and quality of floats. An added bonus was the fact that the rain stayed away during the parade, indeed the sun shone for most of it.
A wide range of establishments, businesses, sporting clubs, rally cars, haulage contractors, transport companies, youth groups, novelty acts and voluntary organisations, among others, put on a wonderful spectacle for the 75 minutes of the parade.
The Devlinreagh School Band led the parade into town and, as usual, entertained the crowd before the parade passed through. The last act in the parade was the award winning Fanad Accordian Band, who made the short journey across the Harry Blaney bridge, to show off their considerable talents.
While the amount of effort and degree of originality shown by the participants in preparing their floats was considerable, and was wonderful for the spectators, it left the work of the judges in determining the most original float very difficult. After much deliberation the judges selected The Mevagh Voluntary Fire Service as the winners. The theme was “No Horse Meat Here” despite the fact that they had a horse carcass on their float and a horse following the float.
DJ John Bosco kept the crowd informed of the various floats as they passed by the grandstand kindly supplied by Willie Doherty, Cranford. Cllr. Noel McBride thanked all those who helped in anyway to make the Carrigart St. Patrick’s Day parade such a success and he congratulated the town’s newest business, Galanta Gifts, who kindly donated sweets for all the children.
The organisers would like to thank Maggie Doherty, Carrigart Hotel and Belinda McGroddy, Moving Mevagh Forward for all their hard work in the preparation for the successful day.
