The Spring bank holiday weekend marks the start of another festival season for many and several hundred loyal revellers dusted off the camping gear and headed to the race track-hugging venue, home to the Off The Tracks Festival, for another weekend of reliably good entertainment (if not bank holiday weather).
Arriving on site at 8pm after work the year-round campsite is already a colourful salad of tents and campervans and caravans, so after a quick hello to the inside of my hastily erected tent it was straight down to Park Farm's barns and yards to where the early arrivers are already getting settled in and making in-roads on the real ale selection. Although the Friday evening entertainment is low key there's already a happy buzz about the place and with at least the promise of a good weather forecast for the following day it seems people are up for making the most of the holiday weekend.
After not too long the sudden closure of the real ale bar/shed seems to indicate we've been making the most of it too much, raising concerns for the longevity of the available stock, but there's still the indoor bar open till silly-o-clock as usual, and the night strecthes on. Folk rock band Leatherat playing in the barn are good energetic fun and get my tired feet moving, followed by DJ Matt spinning the discs but by then the working week catches up with me and it's not the time for dancing now.
Sitting in the bar contemplating a relatively early retirement a group of djembe drummers appears out of nowhere sits down and starts up some truly wicked drumming - no idea who they were, I never saw them again the whole weekend but they were reviving tonic that delayed my wobble back up to the campsite for another couple of hours...
Off the Tracks Festival 
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