Madhouse diaries : Kite festival at the beach

I've been so busy sharing stories about our summer holiday in Lanzarote that I haven't had a chance to tell you what's been going on closer to home. A couple of weeks ago, with the backdrop of a beach and a bright blue sky that would put Lanzarote to shame, we headed to Dunkirk beach for the Festival du Vent - the Festival of the Wind. 

There were various extreme sports going on, such as kite-surfing, wind-surfing and sand-yachting, but what interested us was the kites down the far end of the beach.

There were all sorts of different shapes, from clown fish and teddy bears to frogs and Tweety Pie.

There was even a gigantic hippo anchored to the beach !

Some were doing acrobatics and looked just like Siamese fighting fish tumbling about in the sky.

We were impressed by just how many strings were attached to the different kites - I suppose they have to prepare for the eventuality of some of the strings snapping. I bet the big ones cost an absolute fortune so it would be very sad to see them drifting off into the sky because of a broken string !

There was also a section given over to windmills and windchimes.

But the main attraction was definitely the kites. This was one of our favourites.

Nemo was being filled up with what looked like a giant hairdryer just as we were leaving !

Oh look, it's a Pokemon (maybe) !

The only bad thing was the wind blowing the sand in our eyes. Without the wind we wouldn't have had the kites though, so we couldn't really complain !