The St. Annes International kite festival organised by SmileFactor10 was held over the weekend of September 2nd to the 4th 2023 on the beautiful sandy beaches of St. Anne’s on the Sea, Lancashire. We were lucky to be able to attend and fly at this event alongside many fliers from the UK as well as a number of international fliers.
Wow, what a fantastic event to have been part of! We arrived onto the beach mid afternoon on the Friday and put our first kites up into the sky. It was superb to fly all evening and until the firework show started, the kites looked amazing lit up by the spotlights and the show was added to this year by the many kites lit up with their LED’s. Personally I loved flying my Rolf Zimmerman starfish that danced in the night sky and lit up beautifully using my headtorch.
Saturday brought great flying weather and before long the sky was filled with kites of all shapes and sizes. The beach was full of people having picnics, flying kites and just enjoying the spectacle. It was great to see so many kite fliers interacting with the public with many allowing them to have a go at flying their kites. I do feel that this is missing in so many festivals and it was lovely to see. I managed to ‘escape’ our arena for a short time so that I could have a quick visit to the Artistic arena. On the way I loved walking under the streamer tails set up by Florian Janich, I could have sat underneath them all day!
Sunday brought some fun wind changes to keep us on our toes. It seemed like every time it dropped it would also change direction. I think the public enjoyed watching us drag sand bags across the beach time and time again. They were thankfully very understanding and appreciated the efforts made by everyone to try and keep kites in the sky. Despite the lack of wind at times there was still a good display put on.
A big thank you to all the organisers for making such a fabulous event and a massive thank you to all the fliers (especially arena 2) that made it such a friendly fun event. I must apologise to fliers in the other arenas as I didn’t get chance to come over and film in them but I was a little busy flying in ours. I’ll try harder next time!