Or, more specifically, the Cambridge Folk Festival 2022, using tickets held over from 2020; we were originally scheduled for the Saturday before the 2020 festival was cancelled by the pandemic, and because we decided to hold the tickets we didn’t get the usual opportunity to survey the daily line-ups to choose a preferred day.
In fairness, the festival is as much about the ambience as the music, although on previous visits we have usually discovered a couple of artists who have subsequently become favourites and led to CD purchases and/or streaming downloads shortly afterwards. (Eric Bibb, Great Big Sea, Kate Campbell, Saw Doctors spring immediately to mind). This year’s line up was not quite as strong (or just to our taste quite as much). As is the custom, we took up the favoured position in front of Stage One and enjoyed the beer, food and music in the now time honoured fashion. Sat there for roughly nine hours with intermittent food and drink purchases, the occasional loo break and the odd wander around to Stage 2 to check out the artists there; from what we heard, I’m thinking that on this visit, we may have made the wrong choice. Special shout out to the Young’uns, whose unaccompanied singing was consistently excellent and had the added distinction of originating from Mrs. No Name’s neck of the woods – so, obviously, her favourite. Overall, as well structured as ever with the added excitement of a new parking location for the day visitors; such fun!
Also used the festival visit as an opportunity to take a couple of days hotel break whilst we were there, so actually travelled down on the Friday to allow us to go to the Imperial War Museum, Duxford; relatively close and yet in the 27 years we’ve lived down here, never visited. Thought it was a bit pricey until we got inside (and outside) and saw the scope and breadth of what was there to see. Aviation through the wars (and before), war history and beyond, land warfare were all present and correct. You could just simply browse in admiration or choose to investigate in depth by accessing the museum’s well presented factual and source material. The size of museum, coupled with the maintenance and restoration of the exhibits must cost an absolute packet and goes some way (actually all the way) to justifying the entrance fee.
Incidentally, we stayed for the two nights at the Holiday Inn Express (classed as Cambridge/Duxford) which was perfectly adequate, but a little surprised that all pretence of pandemic precautions are now well and truly out of the window. Although, evidently, that’s as much the clientele as the hotel! Plus, they know what to charge – I guess IWM Duxford and the folk festival make the location quite desirable, especially if, like us, you are a little tardy in booking. 🙂