Happily for all involved the ground - although decidedly spongy - stood up to the 29,000 festival-goers who risked the rain and were rewarded with a scorching weekend.

Arriving early gave me the chance to take in the scale of The Big Chill without the crowds. And it’s pretty huge, far more spread out than most other festivals considering the relatively small size of the crowd (and compared to Cambridge Folk Festival practically enormous) and a good quarter of an hour between the furthest stages. There was no danger of dehydrating or starving though as you could hardly stumble without hitting a decaf half-caf organic latte stall or organic hand-reared vegan sausage shop. In other words Big Chill organisers Pete Lawrence and Katerina Larkin know how to put on a festival and mount a credible alternative to Glasto and the monstrous multitude of big name festivals. It may be a tofu-munching, Guardian-reading fest (I mock, although I’ll confess to reading my Observer on the Sunday morning while sipping freshly squeezed organic lemonade and considering yet another overpriced but delicious pie and mash for lunch, and thoroughly loving it), and the line-up was not as fluid or coherent as the previous year’s but it provides a festival experience you’re still unlikely to get anywhere else.

And this is all before the music comes in. Ojos de Brujo provided the performance of the weekend, with their high-octane nu-wave flamenco and they were fired-up even by their own standards. The Blockheads have to get a mention for pure entertainment and feel-good value as does Bonobo, and similarly the well-established Sunday set from Norman Jay set the crowd up for the final hours of the festival. On the fringe were some great sets including one from one-man hip hop reggae folkster Joe Driscoll on the tiny SoCo Fat Tuesday stage, who despite looking a little worse for wear got a bemused crowd dancing hard in the early afternoon. Tunng were upgraded from the previous year (when they appeared on the Village Green stage) to the Castle stage and made the leap in style.

The folk stream that ran through the festival last year held the acts together a little more for me, but that was just a small cloud above the fields of Eastnor which the general ambience, creativity and energy of the Big Chill dispelled with few problems.

Links:
http://www.bigchill.net/index.html