Trowbridge - our festival-going grows up

We've made family trips to the Tolpuddle Martyr's Festival since the very first year that they allowed camping - in a recently-mown corn field that was still very spiky with stubble. We, and especially the children, have grown up with Tolpuddle, appreciating the new features each year: hot showers, children's entertainment, music on the Saturday, and more recently, the Friday night, and food now on sale throughout the weekend. That first year we went to Tolpuddle our only hope for Saturday lunch was a pasty bought from the village petrol station.

The petrol station closed the next year, and this year we noticed that a block of flats has been buit where it used to stand. Bad news for the villagers but no bother for us since the caterers at Tolpuddle now serve food from Friday until Monday.

We've also been to the last couple of 'Big Session' festivals - our local gig, hosted by the Oysterband at Leicester's De Montfort Hall. It's a similar size to Tolpuddle but without the trade unionists, and with inside flushing toilets.

This weekend we graduated to a 'real' folk festival. It's the 35th Trowbridge festival this year, and the experience shows. The ticketing, bars and general organisation is superb with hardly any queues for anything despite there being something like 20,000 people here. There's a lovely chilled atmosphere during the day, and large marquees with lots of room for both dancing and sitting for the performances. Many people have evidently been coming year after year, and the family-friendly status is well deserved.

The festival has also gone out of its way to welcome people with disabilities - I've seen several wheelchairs around the site and several 'disabled' portaloos.

There are some things, however, that Trowbridge could learn from Tolpuddle. For a start, we still haven't found any showers. Given how much dancing I did last night I fear I'm going to be rather smelly by the time we get on the ferry on Monday afternoon if we can't resolve that.

Secondly Trowbridge seems to suffer from the classic campsite phenomena of people knicking the toilet rolls so that they've got one of their own to carry around. I don't know whether its cos Tolpuddle is imbued with socialist consciousness or just because there are always many loo rolls in each toilet there, but this just doesn't happen at Tolpuddle.

Thirdly there is a massive amount of rubbish here: bins in all the open areas and giant skips in the camping areas. I know it is just a massive site but surely some basic sorting of recyclables would be possible. Not that there's been ne effort towards greening Trowbridge: many of the caterers are using wooden rather than plastic cutlery, and paper cups and plates. That's good but the benefit is rather undermined if they go to landfill instead of composting. Likewise with the 'vegetable' drinking glasses made from cellulose.

Of course the music here is excellent: last night's opening featured Cara Dillon and the Battlefield Band before winding up with a mammoth set from the Oysterband. We managed to got through the whole of Tolpuddle without hearing anyone singing The World Turned Upside Down. Given that its often sung almost as a dirge I didn't really miss it, but when the Oysters sing it to a rocking beat, and a couple of thousand people in the crowd join in it is very definitely more in anger than in sorrow. You could hear the subtext: the hired men may have cut the Diggers down, but it is our land and we will claim it back. Others of the political Oyster back catalogue also got an outing: Jam Tomorrow, Everywhere I Go and even Native Son. A fantastic set, and the crowd in such good voice bodes well for the rest of the weekend.