500,000 ready to party

Carnival time: 2,000 musicians, dancers and street performers will join the river procession
The Weekender

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Half a million people are expected to take part in the 10th Thames Festival this weekend.

The event, which celebrates the river, will feature boat races, a sail past by working vessels, cruises on historic boats, street art, a huge fireworks display - and even a nudist beach.

The climax is on Sunday evening when 2,000 musicians, dancers and street performers with lanterns and illuminated costumes will replace cars on the Victoria Embankment.

The procession, featuring 30 acts from Britain and abroad, begins at the northern end of Waterloo Bridge at 7pm, crosses Blackfriars Bridge and ends behind the National Theatre.

From 9.45pm, fireworks will be set off from a barge between the two bridges.

At low tide on Sunday the foreshore outside the Festival Hall will be turned into a nudist-beach by members of the Natural Theatre Company, who will perform a slapstick routine in bodysuits and brandishing giant sticks of rock.

Tomorrow and Sunday, Reclaim the Beach will use parts of the foreshore at low tide as a music stage and for sandcastle competitions, games, a beach clean-up, archaeological walks and flotsam sculpture workshops.

The two-mile stretch of bank between Westminster and Tower bridges will be packed with sideshows, buskers, street theatre, sculptures, riverthemed puzzles and there will be dancing, including tango outside Tate Modern and a hoedown outside Southwark Cathedral.

In Bernie Spain Gardens, 5,000 school pupils and 10,000 members of the public will create an illuminated flower sculpture and outside Tate Modern the public can try trapeze flying.

The 20th Great River Race takes place tomorrow with 275 craft rowed or paddled by 2,000 people from Richmond to Greenwich. The boats should arrive at Westminster Bridge at around midday and take 90 minutes to pass through the festival area. On Sunday, barges propelled by giant oars known as sweeps will race from Tower Bridge to Westminster, beginning at 4.45pm.

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