Green man and clouds

i have just returned from green man festival. this was my sixth year there and out of those six, ONE year had decent weather. so, unless shivering and hiding in a tent for four days is your cup of tea, you go prepared.

i have two modes of camping, and two tents. i have a small tent which goes with a roll mat and sleeping bag and fits in a rucksack and is no fuss. i am perfectly happy with this for short stays or when the weather forecast is not disastrous. then i have green man (or long stay) mode. this has airbed and lights and space for chairs and is very, very waterproof.

 it was more than worth the distress of carrying everything around, as it rained pretty much solidly for the first day and a half there, and fairly regularly thereafter.

serge gave us a scare on the way down by mimicking the noise of a van about to break in two, but is turns out that said noise was just the result of a minor bump causing the rear step and exhaust pipe to occasionally collide. after that she was great, more of that later. here she is at our last festival together (excuse rubbish mobile phone photo):

i love green man. i love the fact that people are nice to each other there. i love the music, the food, the atmosphere, and the fact that it looks like this:

personal highlights, in no particular order, were camping stove haloumi rolls (see below) sweet baboo's various performances, flaming lips, laverbread burger, beirut, losing at scrabble, spencer mcgarry season's orchestral spectacular, crumpets, tindersticks (especially lovely), amazing friends, efterklang, the sound of rain on a tent whilst buried in a duvet, my last trip in serge, and makeshift shelters

the drive home to cardiff from green man is fairly lovely, however, as serge vansbourg will be going up for sale about now and this was our last proper outing, i decided to take an even nicer route home. this had nothing to do with me missing a turn.

i drove though the brecon beacons, actually in a cloud which was fun if a little hairy:

sheep would occasionally run out in front of the van, bizarrely prompting me to question whether or not i would consider eating roadkill (i've been a vegetarian on moral & taste & health grounds for 10 years). i think i decided i didn't object to the thought, but considered it a little pointless and unneccessary- i don't miss or crave meat in any way.

after that i took one of my favourite drives through Brynmawr (i'm familiar with brynmawr through work and a project we run based on the reuse of the abandoned boiler house, which was part of the incredible dunlop semtex rubber factory, the main part of which has sadly been demolished. i might do a blog about this place soon. anyway here's a snap of me at the boiler house taken by one of my students:)

after that it was through the ebbw valley and cwmcarn, with all of its mining towns and beautiful hills and victorian factories. absolutely stunning.

after arriving home it was laundry, shower, baking (vanilla yogurt cakes), and then out for my last alcoholic drinks as a 28 year old. my annual sober six weeks starts today!

wish me luck!