BLAENAVON Town Band competed at the National Brass Band Championships last weekend, ending up seventh in the whole country in their category.

The band, which was established in the late 1890s, competed against 17 other bands in the finals in Cheltenham on Saturday, September 21.

Secretary of the band, Paul Miles, said despite not winning a positional prize the band were really pleased.

He said: “It was absolutely fantastic and the band all agreed we couldn’t have done any better. We had our performance professionally recorded and then listened to it on CD on the coach home. Everybody was quite surprised at how well we sounded.”

Mr Miles explained each band competes in a section depending on standard, like a league system, with section one being the highest.

The best the band has done was third in 1999 but that was while competing in section 4.

Mr Miles said the band had to play an “incredibly difficult piece of music,” a test piece called Traversada.

The band was drawn to play first, which meant they also had to perform the National Anthem.