Family Friendly Festival

Music Festivals mean different things to different people. There are those who are there for the music, those who are there for the beer and cheer and those who are there for a mixture of the two. Then there are the families! You know the ones with the prams, the screaming child/children occasionally and the parental pained expressions. I fall into the last category and this year having already dragged my long suffering wife and two young children (aged 41/2 and 19 months) around Glastonbury I thought I would give the Cambridge Folk Festival a try.

After an unavoidably later start than we would have liked we arrived at Coldhams Common camp site at approximately 3.30 p.m. after a 4 hour cross country trek in our faithful Camper Van. On arrival, we found that we had a "tent pass" rather than a "caravan/camper van pass". Thankfully, the natives were friendly and having sorted out the red tape we were shown to our pitch. How civilised-more caravan club than Festival me thought.

Having established base camp my son and I set off to establish location of toilets, water taps, refuse facilities etc. I was immediately impressed with the site and it's facilities and how friendly everybody was. The sun was shining, the thistles were long and there were people singing and playing music-festival life was good.

Having fed the kids we set off for the festival site at approximately 6.30p.m. We caught the courtesy bus and were soon on site. There we met the infamous Neil King who showed us to the main music locations, food outlets, market stalls etc. As those attending will know stage 1 was not up and running on the Thursday evening and so we decided after leaving Neil to explore the site and before too long found ourselves listening outside the Radio 2 stage to Billy Bragg. Unfortunately, we could not get in to the tent as it was too crowded and after 30 minutes or so we decided to return to Coldhams Common.

Once the kids were in bed I left the wife on guard duty to visit the large tent on site where I enjoyed listening to several songs about soap, chocolate and rubber dolls! Who says that Folk songs are boring?

On Friday morning the kids were up bright and early as they do not seem to comprehend the concept of the hangover and the need on a Festival site to remain quiet until approximately 12 noon. Rather than annoy our neighbours we went for a walk around the site, visited the market stalls on site (which were excellent) and then we met with some fellow friendly campers and decided to take a trip into Cambridge. Once again, the helpful site staff pointed us in the direction of the suitable bus stop and within 10 or 15 minutes we found ourselves in the centre of Cambridge.

Having explored the sights, had a bite to eat we took a bus direct to Cherry Hinton arriving on site mid afternoon. We wandered about in the usual way, listened to a variety of Bands had tea and then ended up once again in the Club tent where we and the children enjoyed listening to an audience participation band. We then moved on to listen to Eric Bibb on stage 1 and thereafter the Water Boys before catching up with some "token women" having a Ceilidh in the Radio 2 stage tent. By 10.00p.m. the children were tired and so we returned to Coldhams Common my intention being to return later to watch Horace X. Unfortunately, that did not materialise and so once again I found myself in the camp site tent/Marquee enjoying some local folk singers.