A festival weekend - Broadstock Saturday at Crowhurst

Continuing our run of busy weekends, we are cramming two festivals into this one! Yesterday we were fortunate to have been invited to join our friends Steve and Frances at a fabulous little festival local to their village of Crowhurst, near Hastings in East Sussex. Broadstock Music Festival has been running for several years now, with a brief hiatus last year, and takes place in the beautiful grounds of Broadwood. Limited to just 300 adult tickets, it's a perfect size of music festival for me and its proceeds are reinvested back into the village. There is a camping field, children's activities including a very good face painter, one music stage and two food options - pizza or cupcakes!

Before I mention the music, I will say thank you to

The Pizza Laundry 

everyone who baked cakes and womanned the refreshments stall. I should have taken a photo of the selection early in the day because it was certainly an enticing display! I thought the pizzas were tasty too and was glad to see the van doing a steady trade. If you spot this Pizza Laundry van anywhere, do give them a try! They really do have a wood fired oven in there and I was impressed with our very thin crust red onion, pine nut, mozzarella and basil pizza. I did mean to find out why the Pizza Laundry name, but forgot to go back and read the sign. If anyone knows, please Comment!

The main event for me was, of course, the music and,

Sharpe And Larsson at Broadstock 

although we only stayed until about half past seven rather than until the death at ten, we got talented musicians and a well-thought through variety. I was pleased to finally meet and hear local guitarist Hratch. He and Dave played together in pre-me days and we both loved his set. Entirely new to us were bluesy trio Sharpe And Larsson and this was perfect laid-back music for a sunny festival afternoon! If you liked their sound as much as I did, further dates are on Helen Sharpe's Facebook page and they are playing at a jazz breakfast in Crowhurst sometime in October. I'm not sure if we will be back this way again then or not.

Brief mentions also to two other sets that particularly caught my ear: we only got to hear Son Of Kirk as a duo instead of their usual four piece, but I loved their sound and lyrics and we tracked them down online when we got home to experience the full sound with cello. Love cello! My other favourites were Tunbridge Wells-based Island Cassettes with their fun indie/worldbeat music which reminded me a little of Graceland-era Paul Simon.

Huge thanks to everyone who made this festival happen. I'll finish with a few YouTubes so you can hear the great music too!