Thursday, 14 August 2025

Falmouth Week attracts the crowds to the town

Falmouth Week is one of Cornwall’s biggest summer festivals, blending world-class sailing with vibrant onshore celebrations. Originating in 1837 as a local regatta, it now hosts the largest sailing races in the South West, with more than 400 yachts competing this week in Falmouth Bay and the Fal estuary, the Carrick Roads. 

The week began last Saturday with the Falmouth Carnival parade filled with music, dancing, and creativity, led as always by the Falmouth Marine Band. Known for their "marching cacophony" and anarchic percussion, they don wildly imaginative costumes each year and play with chaotic abandon. Their "music" is an exuberant mix of drums, cowbells, kazoos, whistles, car horns, and anything else that makes noise. Rhythm is "loosely observed" and tunes are "optional" as they keep up the racket all the way along the route.

MFGA
Falmouth has been busy all week, but yesterday it was bursting at the seams as most of Cornwall poured in for the highlight of the week, the early evening display by the RAF's Red Arrows over Falmouth Bay.
The crowds building at Gyllyngvase beach an hour before the display
The 20 minute display is always impressive, but for those who travelled to Falmouth by car the exodus was challenging on the grid-locked narrow roads!
The memorable week concludes tomorrow night with fireworks over the harbour.
Harbour fireworks, 2014

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