On #HastingsPeer For #HastingsPirateDay 2016

July 17th 2016 was this year's anual Hastings Pirate Day.

In case you're interested: Hastings currently holds the world record for the most people to be grouped in one area dressed as pirates at the same time. If I'm not mistaken, the record is currently 14,231, and was achieved in 2012.

Anyway, stuff happens for Hastings Pirate Day all over the town, but since they FINALLY have the peer finished - after it burned down the year before we moved down here, and they had to fight to get the work done, because it wasn't the council who owned it - and it was officially opened again this year, we decided to combine checking that out with our Pirate Day outing, so it was only the pirate themed activities happening in and around the peer that we witnessed.

Kelly and I had already planned to do this, but were then joined by our friends Lorna and Andy, as well as Lorna's friends Kaye and Robyn. So, though it was just the two of us for the first part of our outing, we finished things off as a group.

Luckily, the weather was beautiful. Unlike last year, when it rained heavily most of that weekend.

Anyway, here are some pirate themed photos we took. As I've mentioned before, our camera isn't the greatest, which means the shots aren't going to be great quality. But slightly fuzzy shots are better than no shots at all, right?

OK, so...

Here's a pirate flag that was blowing in the breeze coming in from the ocean:


We didn't dress up, but a lot of other people did. Even some of the dogs got in the pirate spirit, like Milly here:


Some of the pirates didn't stop long enough for us to get decent photos of them...


While others were more than happy to pose for the camera...


As I mentioned, even pets were dressed up a little. We didn't get any more pirate pup photos though. We also didn't get a photo of this adorable little toddler who was all dressed up.

There was music playing, and a guy getting kids to jump about to music. But we didn't get photos of that.

We did, however, get a couple of shots of a pirate who was entertaining the crowd with his juggling skills...


And Captain Jack Sparrow dueling another pirate...


(There would have been more of Captain Jack Sparrows duel, but they were obviously moving about a lot, and people's heads blocked the camera's view in most of the shots we attempted).

We were also lucky enough to be near where the pirate band was gathering ready for the pirate parade...


It makes a change... Normally we only catch the parades as they pass our building. But this time we were at the start of their route. So we got some photos as the pirate parade started out...


At this point, the pirate activities seemed to move away from the peer, and we didn't go and check out what else was going on in town. I expect you can find photos and information about the other stuff that happened for Hastings Pirate Day by looking it up on Google though, if you want.

There was a bit more to our day out though. But I'll tell you about that tomorrow, because this is already a long-ish and very picture heavy post, and I don't want to make it any more difficult to load than it already will be for those of you with slow internet connections. So, come back tomorrow for more from the peer.