Every year in Ottery St Mary which is a town near Exeter for bonfire night the tradition of “Rolling” barrels through the extremely crowded streets is somehow still continued despite the trouble that it must cause in the health and safety mad world we now seem to live in.
“Barrel Rolling” is where over a 12 month period barrels are coated with coal tar before being lit and carried through streets packed with people who have to make sure they get out of the way before getting hit by it!
The event starts in the late afternoon with the children’s barrels and progresses as the evening goes on to the ladies and men’s event. The barrels progress in size as the evening goes on with the final barrel weighing around 30kg! In order to carry a barrel you must have lived in the town for all or most of your life.
This year was my third year attending the event and for the third year in a row the beautiful British weather supplied us with rain, though thankfully it was only for about half an hour but long enough to get everybody attending soaking wet!
For the photographers who may be reading this, to give you an idea of how close you are to the barrels, all of the photos in this blog post were taken at 28mm and have not been cropped at all!
brilliant picture of the person avoiding the flaming barrel
cheers, I had to do alot of narrowly avoiding the barrels just after these photos were taken!