Saturday review

for loads of great photos, see here
We awoke to gorgeous sunshine and surveyed the brightly coloured campsite, with the organisers going to much trouble to provide us with colourful flags and large inflatables overhead, as well as hammocks for the kids and the hungover, it really set an atmosphere for merrymaking. The anticipation built as 12 o’clock approached and the festival proper kicked off.

Set in two connected arenas the site was slightly reworked to include a few more stalls this year and a wide selection of catering and shops were provided (although there was no real Chai tent ;-) ). Most people had arrived on the Friday and with a lot of day trippers arriving to fill the area in front of the main stage there was a real buzz about the place. With giant fish; a fairy couple in green, yellow and orange; stilt walkers; aliens; Bush and Blair; the hilariously timid Insecurity Police and dragons also appearing, to travel through the crowd, as well as a kid’s procession later in the day.

The kids area had been expanded and improved and there was much more for them to do, many of them in fancy dress and face painted were trampolining, swinging, making things, practising circus skills, putting together plays and having fun as the adults talked, helped, drank and watched the bands in the Circus Top stage.

As last year, the place had a wonderfully relaxed feel, with no obvious security and the local constabulary joining in the fun by trying out poi or taking pictures, retrieving lost hats, window shopping and clearly enjoying the festival too.

We took in most of the bands on both stages, as to travel between them was easy and visited both the Hope Bar (main arena) and Fiddlers Arms (Big Top stage) for more lovely ale. Friends found that it was a bit of a trek to the local supermarket in Fairmile to re-stock on supplies and buy a paper! But the walk they reported was very pleasant.

In fact there was also a secluded nature walk around the outskirts of the site which enabled us to appreciate the wonderful location of the site, it's natural beauty and realise the age of some of the 300 plus year old trees.

Highlights of the day included The Lovegods (the first time I’ve seen them and not the last), the excellent 3 Daft Monkeys were here again, Reviver - Mark’s offshoot band were great, but despite it being described in the programme (a little expensive for its content at £5) as not being anything like the Levellers - his voice is so much a part of their sound it was hard to not make a comparison. Solabeat Alliance and the wonderful Neck got us all dancing. Before The Bays brought us their giant continuous Future Sound of Londonesque jam session, glorious! And unnerving to realise at the end that they had not paused once!

The Peatbog Faeries were replaced by the Go Lem Sound System, a good international reggae outfit but I felt a bit upset that the Faeries weren’t there - they were one of the bands I was looking forward to seeing and the lack of fiddles was noticeable. But none the less these Mediterranean sounds were very, very good and a perfect accompaniment to a field full of revellers and fairies on a Saturday!

Then came three tremendous bands on the main stage - The Neville Staple Band got the Rude Boys dancing, with a host of all your favourite Specials' numbers plus a few cool covers and before we’d caught our breath Alabama 3 served up some killer country tinged tunes and a huge entertaining set, we'd almost lost our voices singing along to Mao Tse Tung, U Don't Dance to Techno and all those other songs of heartbreak and pain, pardners!

And then, and then, The Levellers played a huge set to a rapturous audience despite Mark complaining of a sore throat. With fantastic visuals behind them, they had the crowd leaping about in unison screaming along to help Mark out with the words! Playing everything but the few mellow tracks like Battle of the Beanfield and The Boatman, which they were reserving for their repeat performance. Words cannot convey how good they were but suffice it to say everyone loved it and walked away buoyant and chatty from a truly powerful performance!

The three bands on the main stage were so good that I didn’t get to see the alternative offerings of System 7, Rory McLeod and Seize The Day but those that did reported back that it’d been fantastic! My reason for missing much of Rory was a little matter of setting off a six foot Thai Lantern into the night sky to the delight of the kids in the tents around me and possibly the audience below too.

But the fun didn’t stop there, up at the Campsite Café Pressure and the Dreadzone Sound System provided more tunes as we watched fantastic fire juggling and danced long into the night, before again returning to the barbecue - which someone had stolen! Still a shopping basket and a disposable barbecue made do with occasional forays to the Campsite Café fire pit to chill on some ancient log benches and chat to those gathered around it.

Latest Updates