MONEY given for Wellington Carnival came to £2,877 – £200 down on last year – but sales of LED toys generated extra income of £1,830.

Committee chairman Dave Rylatt was slightly disappointed donations were down but said this was a continuing trend.

But he was pleased with the sale of LED toys. “It is pivotal to the survival of the Carnival,” he said. “We all understood that taking on traditional sellers that plague carnivals was not going to be easy.

“We gained valuable lessons this year in what works and what doesn’t. We also struggled with getting enough support that would have had a bigger impact.

“To put it into a nutshell, we took on an entirely new business stream, added that to trying to arrange a carnival, as well as helping host 52 people from France and Portugal.

“ We really appreciate the people who supported us in helping us with this initiative this year. We have plenty of ideas how to improve this in following years.”

Mr Rylatt said a lot of the donations were low value or foreign denomination coins. “During the counting of the money, many large denomination notes were noted – mainly collected by our own Pearly Queen Madge Covey – but the majority were pennies and two pence pieces,” he said.

“Some clever engineers have developed technology to help sort, count and batch vast volumes of change, although this technology doesn’t work so well when the coinage is wet – our first year suffering this – and it also goes haywire when it encounters foreign coins, acorns, Haribo sweets, leaves and other unidentifiable objects that find their way into the collection pots.

“We also have hundreds of foreign coins to go through yet. We will try to bank what we can – mainly Euros – but the residents in Wellington must be travelling further afield than normal as we haven’t heard of half of the coins or are able to establish where they originate from.

“Carnival isn’t finished for the committee members. Our season finishes in mid-November when we help at Glastonbury.

“Our thanks go out to all who donated to Wellington Carnival and many thanks to all who helped on the night.”