Friday

Friday starts off with a full English breakfast and a read of the paper. A couple of people who were well and truly Ewaned the night before crawl briefly from their tent only to crawl back again. It's time to get the bus and head back to the main festival site.

Having met up with Steve, I go and do one of the saddest things I've ever done at a festival. It's off to the Adhoc Café to check my e-mail. The Adhoc Café is the latest addition to Cambridge. Twelve terminals allow you to surf the net and collect mail whilst enjoying one of the best cups of coffee on site.

Whilst wandering around the site, we happen to blunder into Peter Buckley Hill. There's a bit of time just to chew the fat and get an interview done. Even early in the morning, Peter still manages to retain his sense of the surreal. A couple more of his fans are hovering so we decide to push on.

There's no music on Friday morning so it's the perfect time to take a nose around the market areas. Hippy ephemera vies for space along a whole range of ethnic bits and pieces. There's a really good jewellery designer selling her wares this year.

It's going to be another scorcher of a day so it's important to get in plenty of fluids before even considering touching cider. A trip to the onsite newsagent secures a banana milkshake. Karl joins us and we try to sort out whose covering what today.

Whilst there's no official bands playing yet, there's already plenty of music happening. There's time to grab a light lunch, savoury crepe, before settling down to listen to one of the unofficial sessions.

We seem to find a music collective that takes it in turns to have a go. Instruments and people chop and change to deliver a highly entertaining and varied selection of music. The site is filling up noticeably by the middle of the afternoon. There's been time enough to ease through a couple of pints, but it's heading towards the first event of the day.

Martin Carthy is delivering a stage skills workshop over in the Club Tent. 422, winners of the Young Tradition award this year are also doing a youth workshop in the Adhoc Café. As Martin is only doing this workshop this festival, he wins out.

The workshop gives veteran performer, Martin Carthy, a chance to recount a list of does and don'ts when it comes to performing. These are illustrated with events from his career that emphasise the points he's making. Multi-instrumentalist Steafan Hannigan is invited on stage to join Martin and help fend questions from the audience.

Songs intersperse the conversation, that at one point gets awfully close to being a group interview of Martin, but he manages to get it back on track. Years of experience are drawn upon to give examples both good and bad.

I leave to head across to the mainstage to catch my first experience of Basque music with Kepa Junkera.