Fairport's Cropredy Convention – Day 2

I was woken at about 4:30 by wild thunder and lightning, and very heavy rain. This continued on for a few hours and I didn't really get much of a sleep after that. I got up about 6:00, had a shower (pays to get to the showers early as they had long queues later), had breakfast and went for a wander around Cropredy.

Very nice village with well preserved houses. It must be quite a strain on a small village of 600 people to have 20,000 festival goers descend on them for a weekend, but it seems to go smoothly and breakfasts were available in the local school, church and town hall.

Back to the festival site and a full day of interesting acts, although the weather was a bit mixed – periods of rain and sunshine alternated all day.

 The 4 of Us - (2 voices and 2 guitars)

 Will Pound and Eddy Jay

Wilson and Wakeman - played a version of David Bowie's 'Life on Mars', Adam Wakeman's father played piano on the original!

 Wildwood Kin - really hard to photograph as they stand so far apart!

One of the stalls was BBC Radio Oxford's 'live lounge' – it was a small gazebo with the technical people and presenter, and various of the performers played there to an audience standing on the grass outside! I imagine listeners at home think it was some sort of indoor venue. One of the performers was Scottish folk singer Fraser Nimmo, who did a very good and funny impromptu show – he wasn't appearing at the Convention, he was a customer but was spotted in the crowd, handed a guitar and put in front of a microphone!

Also saw Wildwood Kin, about 15 minutes after their stage performance – they had to stand a bit closer together so were easier to photograph!

Back on stage and the only disappointing act so far – Caravan. They seemed popular with the crowd, but I find 70s prog rock a bit dull, so it gave me a chance to wander round some of the other things at the event.

Caravan

 Lots of food stalls

 Stalls selling 'hippyish' clothing

 Sort of exotic food on sale!

A lot of people had brought their children, so there were some entertainers at the back of the field

Back at the stage and a performance by Seth Lakeman and his band. It rained fairly heavily during their set, but the crowd just put their waterproofs on and carried on watching.

During Seth's set the rain stopped and we were treated to a wonderful rainbow

Richard Thompson - did half of his set solo, then half with Ex-Fairport bandmates Simon Nicol, Dave Pegg and Dave Mattacks, plus Zara Philips on vocals. 

Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls

I only watched about half of Frank Turner's set – I was starting to get a bit tired, so headed back to my tent.

One more day to go!