Bridge of Allan Fireworks will provide ‘More Bang for your Buck’

By Jason White

This year’s Stirling and Bridge of Allan Bonfire to be at its ‘best ever’ as the community come together to celebrate Bonfire Night on Tuesday.

The annual November event is celebrating a landmark 40th anniversary and a spectacular fireworks display has been promised as it aims to put on a good event and raise money for local good causes and businesses at the same time.

The event has once again been organised by the Bridge of Allan and Stirling Round Table community, who have been arranging the celebrations for years in an attempt to raise money that can be distributed to good causes and bringing the community together.

Garry Freckleton, Chairman of the Bridge of Allan and Stirling Round Table, believes the event is of key importance for the community and local good causes.

“I think the thing is that it’s good to have an organised bonfire and fireworks event because everyone likes it that way, it’s a big community event, we’ve been going now for 40 years, it’s a real integral part of the community as people from Clackmannanshire, Bridge of Allan, Stirling, Dunblane and all that come down to enjoy it and we’re looking to carry on that tradition.

This is our main fundraising event so in terms of raising money for the good causes, it’s really important to us and really important to the people we give grants to that we get a good crowd and get as many people to come in.”

The Bridge of Allan and Stirling Round Table is part of an international community which has over 35,000 members in 60 different countries and despite not being funded they are the biggest provider of fireworks in the UK.

As a result, the Round Table rely on local goodwill and volunteers in order to get the event going as costs are always monitored closely

“We look really closely at costs to try and keep them as low as possible, everything we do we look at it to see which way is the best value for money. We’ve been lucky this year and put a call out for sponsorship from local businesses and we’ve had a really good response from them as people who run local business and have been coming to the event for years and want to support us.”

McKenzie skips in Stirling delivers wood and pallets for the bonfire.

Despite the support from the sponsorship this year, Garry still believes if it wasn’t for the people, then the event couldn’t take place.

“It’s not easy to put on, it takes a lot of organisation and if we didn’t get the support of the community coming to buy tickets rather than standing outside and watching it for nothing then we wouldn’t do it and the event could be lost.”

Bonfire Night isn’t the only event the Round Table organise for the community as they are responsible for bringing Santa to the streets of Cornton, Stirling and Bridge of Allan every year as well as their Christmas tree sale every year.

The event takes place at Strathallan Games Park in Bridge of Allan with gates opening at 5.45pm, tickets start at £2 for a child, £5 for an adult and £4 for students or seniors.

Music will be provided by the Cabetyu Brothers and Craig John as Freddie Mercury and free parking will be provided by Stirling University.

 

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