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!
