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Cropredy

It's Sunday - we are in a another campsite with Wi-fi - It's now become one of the main things to check when looking at potential campsites. The last one outside Rugby you had to sit out on the bench near reception - this one (nr Bridgewater) allows me to sit in the comfort of my own van, surfing the world.

We left Cropredy today heading for Bideford. I was going to say that Fairport's Cropredy Convention was the best organised I've ever seen, from the way they guide you into the camping sites, to the best festival toilets ever (the days of a piece of wood over a big pit are long gone), to the stewarding, to the time between acts - and then this morning they left us to our own devices getting off a very muddy field after 24 hours constant rain - if it hadn't been for a couple of festival goers with a Range Rover and a tow rope we (and a lot of others) would still be there now.

As to the music - a mixed bag. The festival started as a Fairport Convention reunion concert and they headline the Saturday night - so there are a lot of Fairport fans their lapping up every bit of Folk Rock. For my own part, they are a band I'm aware of, have liked bits and pieces, but it was only as they played their set and included a section in tribute to Sandy Denny who died 30 years ago, that I realised that it is largely the Sandy Denny material that I have noticed and enjoyed over the years - the rest, I can take it of leave it.

The other acts felt a bit incestuous, people that the Fairports have played with over the years who are still churning out the same old stuff - hearing a Prog Rock band playing the stuff they played with Frank Zappa you remember why Punk was such a breath of fresh air in my teenage days. Having said that, amongst the highlights were Joe Brown and Dave Edmunds - crashing through some great standards - good music crosses generations; Legend - a Bob Marley tribute band brought some Jamaican sunshine to a very grey wet Saturday afternoon; John Tams & Barry Coope were brilliant (shame that Supergrass headlined that night - the streams of people leaving early said it all); Siobhan Miller & Jeana Leslie were the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award Winners - beautiful music, as was Julie Fowlis' set, didn't understand a word she sang (It's all Gaelic), but it goes straight to the soul. And the Levellers might be growing on Chris - this was quieter than last week she says!

Church this morning was St Mary the Virgin, Cropredy, for what was advertised as a non-denominational Fairport Sunday service. The usual congregation was boosted by a reasonable number of people who had been to the festival and the guest preacher was a regular Fairporter. But that was about all the acknowledgement that their village had been taken over and there were more people than normal in the church. It was a fairly straight forward MOR Anglican Eucharist, with three bland modern hymns and one standard sung in unison - an opportunity to be creative in the way music and word was presented was lost. Although a preacher using a Blackberry for sermon notes was a new one on me - I'll stick to a scrap of paper I think.

Chris's highlights were 96 toilets all in a row (she tried every one) and Bodger and Badger playing to a tent of students and parents.

So on we go to Bideford and what should be a very different type of festival.

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