Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Middlewich Folk & Boat Festival 2007

What a bloody good weekend - despite the stormy weather throughout!
Was good to be able to enjoy a folk festival again, and gratifying that Patrick enjoyed it so much - he'd never been to a folk festival before. All the artists were good apart from a couple of duff musicians, very good considering. Discovery of the festival was the Demon Barber Roadshow, great music and fantastic sword, Morris and clog dancers (Patrick pretended not to appreciate one of the attractive clog dancers' boob tube slipping down). Seth Lakeman's gig was of course packed, and he gave an excellent gig, one big Northern bloke at the back was inspired to shout "Ah loov you, Seth" - perhaps being fed up of his girlfriend fancying Seth! Elbow Jane also gave a brilliant gig, and Breeze and Wilson were superb, generously giving out not one but two excellent free CDs.
It was also good fun to wander around the Boat Festival (which seemed quite separate, strangely), there were some gorgeous owls from a nearby sanctuary and a very interesting demonstration of how horses were used to pull narrowboats. Patrick had a go at the 6 Knot Challenge - the quickest time to tie six knots won a full set of new fenders, which would have been useful as Ripple had just knackered her front fender in a lock. Considering Pat had only had one quick demo of the knots before the attempt, he did very well, coming pretty close to the leading times!
Show of Hands gave their usual great performance, lifting the roof of the blue-and-yellow stripey tent with numbers like Santiago, Country Life and Roots. Very much pleased that Patrick was yelling enthusiastically for their encore! What's not to like about Show of Hands though?
The weekend also included some really nice pubs such as the Swan at Fradley Junction (good food/beer/atmos), the Narrowboat in Middlewich (OK beer, excellent food and the chance to say hello to Seth Lakeman) and the Newton Brewery, a lovely old-fashioned pub, only one beer (Pedigree) but best pint of the holiday.
So good to be able to enjoy a folk festival again - good music, good company and good beer, and the chance to stay on a narrowboat! Fantastic.

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