One of the many awesome things about living by the seaside is that fireworks are not just for November and New Year’s Eve – there seems to be a display every other weekend at the moment, and whilst we’ve been busy enough to miss most of them we finally made it to a pretty special one last week as part of the Salcombe Regatta.

It was particularly special because, being just up the estuary from my folks’ place, we were able to go by boat. I’m not sure Arthur had any idea what we were up to as we bundled him up and set off down the valley at just the point we would normally have been winding him down to go to bed. He predictably got very excited when he saw the water, taking advantage of the heavy cool bag Leigh was carrying to make a beeline for it.

 We had time for a bit of all-important stone throwing and high-fiving…

And then it was into the dory to pootle across to Bombay Duck.

I think Arthur was still a little bit sceptical at this point, but he definitely perked up once we made it on board.

After a rainy start to the day it turned into such a beautiful evening. The light is always so stunning at that time of day anyway, and being on the water is especially magical. We found ourselves a buoy with a good vantage point and set up our little picnic. Arthur was a bit too excited to eat much but the rest of us tucked in.

As we ate, more and more boats began to gather in anticipation, and once darkness fell the fireworks began. It wasn’t the first fireworks display Arthur had been to, but it was the first where he didn’t just retreat to the boob as he tried to compute what on earth was going on!

He watched wide-eyed as colour filled the sky, calling out ‘boom! boom!’ in echo of the bangs. He was still a little shell-shocked, but I’m pretty sure he loved it.

I hope so anyway – I turn into a big kid whenever anyone mentions fireworks so we’ll be going to plenty more displays over the coming months and years.

I took lots of pictures, but most of them are blurs (I blame the rocky boat…) This one captures what it was all about for me though – balls of light and colour exploding in the night sky, illuminating the boats below as the reflections shimmer across the water with the lights of Salcombe town twinkling in the distance.