mINtSOUTH.com

Celebrating its twentieth birthday this year, Larmer Tree is a very middle class five day festival held in the Wiltshire/Dorset countryside.

Arriving on the Thursday afternoon, and immediately sensing the locals were all feeling a bit worse for wear after Jools Hollands' Wednesday night set (wouldn't we all!), we decided to drop our bags and have a good roam around before the music really got started.

Rob Ball | mINtSOUTH.com

The first thing that really struck me with Larmer Tree was the vast number of retail outlets for a small festival. The shopping area was pretty much double the size of the main arena and, with everything from hand made clothes to CD's, flavoured liquorish to olives and magazine subscriptions to fudge, the opportunities to part with cash were unavoidable.

Wandering around we found our first band of the day, Ursen. Their Stornaway/Cherbourg influenced folk is never gonna win any awards but was a nice way to ease towards lunch.  After a massive portion of pie, mash and gravy, a talk about the history of the siteand  many drum workshops later, we realised it was time for more music so headed off to the ARC tent for Ruth Theodore.

Sounding like an English Regina Spektor, Ruth looked nervous as she took to the stage in her best festival atttire but grew into her set and left the silent, packed tent completely spellbound with her quiet, intelligently written stories and amazingly tight band.  As cutting as she can be funny, and with a voice much bigger than her tiny frame, Ruth deserves to play much bigger gigs to much bigger crowds.

Unfortunately, just as the momentum was building and the mainstage was opening for the evening, the heavens decided to open. Still, no amount of rain is going to stop Frank Turner having a good time on stage. A big crowd had gathered by the time Frank walked out by himself to open with first album classic 'The real damage' and by the time his band joined to fire into latest single 'try this at home' you could sense the atmosphere really lift and the first dancing of the day start (admittedly mostly from me, but its still dancing, or so ive been told!)

Rob Ball | mINtSOUTH.com

I had been a bit worried that with a headline appearance at 2000trees the following evening, Frank Turner might have used this set as a warm up but I genuinely don't think that's in his make up at all. Firing out 'Reasons not to be an Idiot' and 'Back in the Day' as if he would never play them again, Frank grabbed the crowd and dragged us all along with him whether we wanted to go or not! After playing 'The Road', Frank invites us all to join his band and blasts into 'Photosyntheses'.

Bookending his set with a solo rendition of 'The Ballad of Me and my Friends', Frank Turner's ethos of playing as many gigs as possible and always as if its the biggest of your life has won him more friends again.

By now the rain was coming down so hard we were starting to worry about getting the car out and I had run out of cider money (I refused to pay the £2.75 service charge on the onsite cash machines!) so decided to make a move. That meant we missed dub/reggae covers band Easy Star All Stars and comedian Rich Hall who were both playing late into the night.

All in all, Larmer Tree is a well organised, relaxing festival that seems to appeal to the teenagers as much as it does their parents. I just cant work out why it needs to be stretched over five days? Especially when there are four stages, three of which dont get used untill late in the evening?