Festival and a spinning injury !

 Hi

The last weekend in July saw us attending Shrewkfest, a Ukulele festival in Shropshire, since covid we have only been doing one uke fest a year but I suspect things are going to get back to normal as we already have two booked for next year.

As we needed to charge up batteries etc in the van, we booked a couple of nights on a campsite first just outside Shrewsbury which gave us chance to shop for food and have a mooch round the charity shops ( we do try hard to resist and all we bought was a book and a few cds) We have visited Shrewsbury before but that time it was a week before Christmas and we gave up as the cold and sleet forced us to hunker down in a coffee shop for most of the day.

This time though, good weather !! I love the old houses and shops.😀

The festival is actually held on a farm using the cow shed as the main stage and marquees for the smaller stages. There were food vendors and a small craft market where I spent most of Saturday spinning.

Once all the lights were on, the bar open it changed into a wonderful setting for the weekend and the sound man was pretty much the best that I've ever come across as evidenced by the quality of everyone's videos of the event. This is Phil Doleman in the photo, look him up if you play ukulele as he is very good and great company.

I mentioned Spinning injury, this was partly due to spinning on my treadle wheel for so long (knowing that I have ligament problems around my knee) and walking into a door frame when I got home.

I spun nearly 300gm as well as knitting mitts and headband so a productive but painful weekend.

However, using my crutches a bit more means I am colour coordinated more of the time haha

speak soon xx

back in the van again

Hi

You may have worked out that we are trying to make a trip out every month between trying to tame the garden and wash fleeces (yes fleeces, I was expecting two from different sources but seem to have a bout six to wash!!)

This months trip was to Upton upon Severn, a charming village that annually hosts a Jazz festival, a Blues festival and a Folk festival . This year saw the Ist Upton upon Severn Ukulele festival.

Upton itself has many old buildings and we will return sometime to explore the little alleyways, investigate the museum and the antique shops but this time we were camping and hanging out with the ukeists.

As with any new venture, there are always teething problems but overall we had a really good weekend catching up with folks.

Watching the sun set over the campsite

watching the performers through out Saturday whilst catching up with a bit of spinning.

and later, another sunset.

Okay, Okay, I may have cheated a little with this picture, all the photos on this blog are untouched by any photo shopping but I thought I would just show the difference it can make. The original photo is below...

I did this to see how easy it would be to produce the Van life photos showing an idyllic life stye on Instagram and I must admit that this weekend I left my camera at home and simply used my phone.

Back to reality, the view from the door and the kitchen window was enough to help destress without any filters :-)

 and I got to wear my festival trousers !

 also discovered that some festival go'ers had four legs and were fairly small !!

Anyway, that's about it for this weekend, fleece washing next weekend and an update on the tdf prep progress.