Crowds flocked to the Sandy Summer Festival on Saturday ensuring the event was a huge success.

Following last year's washout there were fears that the 2008 summer party would also be ruined by torrential rain.

But after months of hard work, festival organisers were rewarded as the weather held-out and the public turned up in their thousands.

Sandy Mayor Colin Osborne was delighted with how the day went. He said: "This year's festival went very well indeed.

"Although the weather looked a bit gloomy in the morning, things brightened up in the afternoon and large numbers of people came along. It was fantastic, just like old times."

After being judged at Western Way from 12.30pm, the three walking floats and three lorry floats - all based on this year's theme of music and musicals - left for Sandy Place Middle School.

And in a closely fought contest, Sandy Cub Pack was awarded Pride of Procession for their version of The Wizard Of Oz.

St Swithun's Lower School won the float competition after dressing up as Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, with the Sandy and Rainbow Brownies coming in second.

From lunchtime onwards there were more than 25 stalls in the arena at Sandy Place Middle School as well as entertainment from popular clowning act Bozo and Zizi and the Sandy reunion band.

Festival organiser Jan Shrieves said: "The day went really, really well and everyone on the festival committee is over the moon.

"It was a bit drizzly in the morning, but by 12 o'clock the weather was clearing and when I went into the town centre there were hoardes of people there.

"Last year we had to cancel the activities at Sandy Place Middle School but on Saturday the arena events went really well. I don't know for sure, but I would guess there were about 2000 people there."

The fun continued with a display of schoolchildren's technicolour dreamcoats in the Tea Tent, a photography competition organised by Ken Lynch and the grand opening of Ladbrokes Gaming and Betting on Sandy High Street.

The day eventually rolled to a close at around 5.30pm, and Jan is confident that the success of this year's festival should ensure another well-attended carnival next June:

"As I said on Biggles FM, watch this space!" she said.