What a beautiful morning after a very good night at our friends Gerry and Toni Wensley. Together with some other neighbours and friends we celebrated New Year's Eve in a fine way.
We decided to visit the London New Year's Day Parade again as we had missed it last year as we were in Florida. So we caught an 'earlyish' train up to Waterloo Station and headed across Westminster Bridge to join the massive crowds.
We found a good spot near the start and the sun was shining down although it was low in the sky which did cause me a few photo problems. Anyway enough of that.
Around 10,000 people took part in the parade with at least 1,500 visiting from the United States of America. There were cheerleaders as well as many marching bands. Some of the bands carried out great choreography whilst delivering their music, a fantastic sight to behold and much appreciated by the growing audience.
Apart from the many bands, there were floats from many of the London borough councils.
Of course the pearly Kings and Queens were there.
The Parade started with the Choir from Walker Valley High School in Tennessee singing the British National anthem followed immediately by the Honda Goldwing Club of Great Britain. The parade lasted almost 2.5 hours without a break and some of the floats were truly great whilst some of the Chinese dancers were terrific.
The colourful outfits worn by many of the participants are seen on our Photo Blog site.
It was a really great way to spend the first day of the year and the weather stayed bright and blue for most of the day.
