A music festival is always cause for celebration and a great excuse to get out into the country for a few days of fresh air and clean-living.
Festie-fans in most parts of the country are limited when it comes to selecting al-fresco fun, most limited to one decent event. Not so for Oxfordshire.
When it comes to staging bashes our county is party central. Take last weekend: while the experimental types were heading down to Braziers Park for Supernormal, 20,000 folk-rock fans were camped out at Cropredy, and 13,000 revellers were causing a scene at the best of them all – Wilderness, near Charlbury.
In a double-dip recession, and crowded market, you might predict disaster. But not a bit of it. Despite wobbles by the organisers of Cropredy about the proximity of Wilderness, both packed in the crowds, aided and abetted by glorious weather.
Even the Olympics and the spectacle of Kingham lad Alex James taking to the stage in Hyde Park for its closing concert, failed to scupper proceedings.
Why? Well the best answer came from Wilderness host, Lady Rotherwick, above, who threw open 100 acres of her garden for the do. “They all appeal to different types of people,” she told me over capuccino in her kitchen on Sunday morning (she radiating polished-good health, while I stood crumpled as a chip wrapper and still sprinkled in glitter after a night spent partying in her woods).
“The people who come here are very special,” she added. “They are a very nice crowd and that’s why I love it. Unfortunately it is the same weekend as Cropredy, but the audience is very different and I don’t think there’s a clash.”
She is right, of course. As lovely as Cropredy was, the kind of people who want to sit in a deck chair and stare at a single stage while supping real ale, are unlikely to enjoy raving in the woods in Indian head-dresses, learning how to fly fish or ride camels, and certainly not join a massed skinny dip in a lake. Vive la difference!
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