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The Blue Dot

Excellent evening spent at the first Blue Dot festival held at Jodrell Bank.  Clever use of the radio telescope as back drop for the main stage... there were some major teething issues which hopefully will addressed if this event happens again - mainly access and parking.. it was a nightmare approach to the festival and fortunately as we were only doing one night we decided to ditch the car and chose to walk the last mile and half into the site... what a relief as if we had queued we would most certainly missed Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the reasons we were going.. anyway we caught them and then enjoyed fantastic set by Underworld - danced much of the night away in the rain - my trusty solfest poncho almost kept me dry.. it was a splendid evening and the telescope looked brilliant when lit up when it got dark.

There was a rather fab "installation" called a luminarium, lack of site information - another hiccup meant we were really lucky to catch it just before it closed... it was a giant multi roomed inflatable light show.using natural light filtered through different coloured and patterned fabric it allowed you to walk around and experience very pleasant and relaxing ambiance.  Unfortunately it was busy so not as relaxing as it might have been but still a good experience.  The other issue was so much of the festival didn't start until the saturday so lots of the tents, workshops, music and displays were closed and the little that was open closed as soon as Underworld finished so suddenly we were all in party tunes mode and nowhere to go!!!! So we set off home and this is when we realised how lucky we were to have parked off site -- everyone was stuck in the quagmire of deep trenched mud and were having to ne towed out by 4×4 landrovers.  Nightmare!!!  But a truly fab night anyway.

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