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The beat of an authentic dragon boat drum reverberated around Serpentine Green heralding the start of the Chinese Year of the Rooster as Gable Events and Sue Ryder Thorpe Hall Hospice launched this year’s Peterborough Dragon Boat Festival.
The boat, complete with paddles, drum and dragon’s head, was stationed in the shopping centre giving young and old alike to get a feel for the Festival.
This year’s Peterborough Dragon Boat Festival, now in its 19th year, will take place on Saturday 10 June at Peterborough Rowing Lake. Already four teams have signed up and more are being sought to do battle over the 200 metre course, cheered on by their supporters. There’ll be lots of bankside fun and some fundraising activities between races.
The dragon boats, qualified helms and all racing equipment are provided, no previous experience is required and each crew is guaranteed a minimum of three races.
Crews will be invited to raise money for Thorpe Hall Hospice before and on the day of the race. It costs £2.8 million a year to provide incredible care at the Sue Ryder hospice – £1.5 million of that has to come from fundraising.
Thorpe Hall fundraiser Nilesh Patel said: “We’re so pleased to be the charity partner of the Peterborough Dragon Boat Festival for the third year running. Judging by past performances we’re never going to win any awards on the water but we’re great at cheering on other teams and supporting those who choose to use the event to fundraise for us!
“At the moment we’re asking people to pledge to do #JustOneThing to support Thorpe Hall – signing up a workplace team for the Festival is just one of the ways of doing this.”
For more information please visit www.dragonboatfestivals.co.uk/peterborough. To speak to the Thorpe Hall fundraising team please call 01733 225999.