And so to the final day of the festival and having awoken late after a long Saturday night I stumbled firstly across Beta on the Kaplick stage who provided a real wake up call with their jagged guitar sound. After this The Defektors played a superb set of ska punk sounding cheerful but with a hardened edge to it that belied the sound. I decided to relax for a while at the Kaplick stage and sheltered from a downpour to witness the second Poeticat set I'd seen in the weekend which was followed by some poetry and some superb belly dancing from members of the Cirque Du Manc troupe.
Mention must go to the Porta Party crew banging out tunes of all kinds around their pink fluffy DJ console in the middle of the field and to the sand sculpture guy who across the weekend had constructed an amazing castle surrounded by a dragon which was illuminated at night and a similarly impressive Buddha sculpted from what had started out as a heap of sand.
Back to the music and the success story of this year that has been the return of RDF lifting the crowd after the earlier rains. It will be good to see them back on the circuit again next year as they always know how to work a crowd. Following the RDF set I sampled the handcut chips from the bar, a sizable portion costing just a pound, a superb festival bargain and very tasty indeed and a top idea from the organisers along with the reasonable bar prices to cater for those on a budget as certainly costs can mount up.
There was an early curfew at 10pm on Sunday but a clash to end all clashes to fit the slot with Banco de Gaia in the Mushroom, Dub Tek, in the bicycle powered stage, Zion Train on the main Stage and Tarantism on the Kaplick. I managed to somehow catch bits of all 4 and finished the festival exhausted watching Tarantism who had pulled a huge crowd eager to end their festival season on a high.
Overall this is a truly awesome festival to end the season and can only get better as time goes on. The setting is beautiful and the infrastructure seems to work, security are present yet unobtrusive and on the whole it attracts a crowd who look out for each other.
review by Darren Luckhurst photos by Gary Stafford
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