High Standards for Best Dressed Bed Award

Team 68 Hiscox grabbed first prize in the 2016 Great Knaresborough Bed Race competition for 'Best Dressed Bed' with their wonderful interpretation of Santiago, the capital city of Chile. Representing hours of careful needlework, the Hiscox bed was decorated with the knitwear of the Andes; the team were dressed in ponchos and straw hats, and there were even two small pugs attired with traditional Chilean flair. 

The winners were narrowly placed ahead of Team 49 Green-tech Gladiators with Manchester (well, someone had to get it). The Manchester bed took as its subject Coronation Street complete with a six foot ten-inch Bette Lynch. In third place and again divided only by the smallest of margins was 88 Team Red Beer with Nicosia and their decorated temple of the 'goddess' Aphrodite.

Highly commended were Team 10 Globe Street Trotters with Singapore, last year's winners Team 26 St John's Juggernauts with Vienna, Team 30 The Rocket Men with Budapest, Team 45 Clarity Clodhoppers with Rio de Janeiro and Team 55 Live for Today with Rome.

The weird, the wonderful and the downright worshipful characterised the whole pageant of decorated beds at the 2016 Great Knaresborough Bed Race. The teams gathered in the grounds of Knaresborough Castle in the morning on Saturday 11 June for final titivation prior to judging, the judges all being independent and brought in from afar. Cross-dressing was again much in evidence and team helpers, many children, were kitted out to match. 

The 2016 theme, 'Cities of the World', gave free rein to the creative imaginations of the teams and their designers. Each team had been given a different city in a public lottery so some had well-known locations such as New York, London, Beijing and Hull, while others had less familiar places like Skopje, Montevideo, Hobart and Anchorage. The cities were selected by the schoolboy grandson of one of the Knaresborough Lions.

So coming up with suitable designs was not easy. However, the painters, joiners, stitchers and all-round crafts men and women of the teams did the event proud, as always, and the Parade from Castle to Conyngham Hall was as spectacular and amusing as ever.

Midway on the Parade the teams were judged for the Most Entertaining with Team 36 The Hairy Fairies winning the award with Seoul and their wondrous 'gangnam-style' routine. 

Well done to them and to all teams who took part in making the 2016 Bed Race pageant as memorable as ever.