Wychwood 2006: and they're off!

Festival steward John Preece kicks off the summer with us at Wychwood

''Located amid the rolling hills of the Gloucestershire countryside, it offers the best in contemporary folk music and an intimate, friendly vibe.'' An Oxfam steward enjoys the sunrise at Wychwood.

For Oxfam volunteers, the Wychwood Folk Festival marks the beginning of the stewarding season. Located amid the rolling hills of the Gloucestershire countryside, it offers the best in contemporary folk music and an intimate, friendly vibe. Old hands and newbies alike find it the perfect start to the summer.

The weekend kicked off on Thursday evening with a typically informative and entertaining briefing session - who would have thought that fire extinguisher dry powder is a mild laxative? Stewards received their day-glow tabards and work assignments, and then were left to their own devices. First things first – we all checked our shifts against the list of performance times, and for me the rest of the evening was spent with my co-campers accompanying a violin and two tin whistles using a frisbee as a percussion device.

Friday saw my first stewarding shift - I was on "floating" duty, which means filling in where extra people are needed and delivering tea, coffee and water to thirsty volunteers. Sent out to the farthest reaches of the site, our team enforced a one-way system, investigated several suspicious fires (mostly barbecues) and kept an eye on the weather for the campers. For some reason, we had a steady stream of people wanting to pitch tents on the racecourse, a strict no-no.

Saturday's shift meant more traffic management, this time at the opposite end of the site under the baking sun - but next to a field full of kites. Tour buses arrived, dropping off suspiciously clean-looking musicians, a steam train chugged by every hour or so, and crew vehicles zoomed around on patrol.

My final shift was the "graveyard" overnighter, but thankfully I was placed on the main campsite entrance - meaning that I saw and spoke to just about everyone coming back to their tent after a hard weekend's partying. Everyone was uniformly tired, happy and trying not to think about starting work again. Once dawn broke, the festival started to wind down and it was all over for another year. Had it really been three days already?

There was so much else going on it would take another few articles to get everything in! The standard of music was unbelievable (if you ever get the chance to see the Peatbog Faeries, go!), and the Silent Disco made a very welcome appearance. There were countless workshops in things like poi, ocharina making(?), and campaigning and if all that wasn’t enough there were films, stand-up comedians, ethnic stalls and some of the most delicious food I've ever had.