Pewsey's Carnival Queen chosen (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Pewsey's Carnival Queen chosen

10:40am Tuesday 17th July 2012 in Pewsey By Nigel Kerton

Carnival in Pewsey is not just a huge community affair, but also very much a family event evidenced by the selection last Saturday of new Carnival Queen, former Pewsey Vale student Sophie Bryant.

Seventeen-year-old Sophie, who lives in Stratton Road, was chosen from five contestants at the carnival’s royalty selection disco organised by Pewsey Hasbeens and held in a marquee behind the pub on Cooper’s Field in Ball Road.

Her attendants are Jade Nelson and Katherine Lofthouse; the Carnival princess is Courtney Clark (who was Flower Girl in 2009) ; the Prince, Alfie Thorne and the Flower Girl, Sophie Farr.

The younger royalty were chosen during the early evening at the disco at which the Mickey High Roadshow provided the music. The selection of the carnival queen followed at 9.30pm.

There were five contestants for the queen selection and nine for the flower girl.

Entries in the other categories were not so strong, but there was enough in each to ensure a selection had to be made.

As so frequently happens in Pewsey the new carnival queen has a relative, cousin Kaleigh Bryant, who was queen in 2007, and Sophie was an attendant to carnival queen Fawn Blair in 2009.

Sophie said she could not make her mind up on Saturday morning whether to enter the queen selection in the evening or not.

“I was trying to make up my mind when my mum persuaded me to have a go,” she said.

Sophie has just completed year at Swindon College studying travel and tourism and is off to a new college in September to take the same subject at Level 3 and has set her heart on working in the travel industry.

Although she has never been abroad or had an overseas holiday, she said: “I want to be a holiday rep in somewhere like Ibiza or Ayia Napa.”

Sophie said she was looking forward to helping with the children’s carnival that always takes place ahead of the main event.

For more information about the carnival, visit www.pewsey-carnival.org.uk