THOUSANDS of people visited Swanage at the weekend to take part in a fundraising extravaganza for the RNLI.

Swanage Lifeboat Week culminated with the Lifeboat Festival and Fair at Prince Albert Gardens on Saturday and Sunday.

The ‘week’ featured a host of events and activities across 10 days, from a fun run, sailing and gig races, a build-a-boat contest, angling competition, live music, barbecue and a raft race.

Becky Mack of the RNLI said it had been a huge success. “It’s been a fantastic week,” she said. “Despite the weather being a bit shoddy during the week, it cleared up for the weekend, and it’s actually better than the forecast at the moment, so we feel very lucky.”

The first event to take place was an open golf competition at the Dorset Golf and Country Club, and the last was a Lifeboat Service at Swanage Pier on Sunday.

And one of the highlights of the weekend was the boat-building competition ahead of the main race at the town’s Stone Quay. A raft race took place on Swanage Beach.

Becky said: “They’re very popular events. It has been really busy during the weekend. Because of the weather, we had to reshuffle or adapt some of the events during the week, but so far we think it’s been really brilliant for us. The golf event is still relatively new, but we had 132 entries this year and we think that we’ve managed to raise around £3,500 just from that. There were 2,000 entrants for our duck race.

The week is the RNLI’s main fundraising drive in Swanage, where the town’s lifeboat station is currently being redeveloped as part of a major £3.5 million project.