Community effort keeps Festival afloat

The vibrant event is the perfect way to celebrate Rye’s links with the sea and provides a great feel-good factor during hard economic times.

Best of all the event, with all it’s colour and entertainment, is completely free of charge.

We say free, but it has still cost a huge amount in effort and commitment and was only saved this year thanks to local business organisations rallying around and coming up with funding. It was a great effort to save a great annual event and we would urge everyone to go and support it. Now it’s fingers crossed for good weather.

You have to sympathise with Fairlight residents who are seeing their homes creep ever closer to the cliff edge. Sea defences costing millions have already failed to slow the march of nature and in these tough times it is hard to see where more money will come from.

There is an argument that those houses should not have been built in the first place in an area where coastal erosion was a known factor.

But this does not help those who now stand to lose their homes.

Something needs to be done but what? We can’t help feeling that this is an ongoing battle against nature which ultimately cannot be won.