Connect day 1

First day at the Connect Festival today. We left about twelve and had a leisurely drive to the B&B in Arrochar stopping for some lunch in Callendar. When we got to the Bed and Breakfast it was great. A really nice room with a view over Loch Long and the Cobbler. The owners seemed nice too. Admittedly we didn't hang about long as we wanted to get over to Inveraray for the festival.

The drive there was pretty scenic and we found the official car park ok, unfortunately the walk from the carpar to the festival itself was about 2 miles over some pretty muddy and hilly terrain.

When we got in there was a aband on the main stage but we decided to have a wander around and check out our surroundings. Highlights included the local Whisky, Real Ale and food tents, but there were loads of other stalls selling food, merchandise and various other festival items like wellies (at an extortionate £25 a pair).

We met up with Lucky Jim, Laurinha and their friend Lizzie and wandered about some more. We caught a wee bit of CSS before doing some more exploring.

The highlight of the day, and possibly the weekend, was definetely The Jesus and Mary Chain who completely lived up to expectations playing a great selection of their classics and some less well known ones like Vegetable Man. This photo is them in full flight. We also bumped into our friend chris and his girlfriend Caroline while we were watching them.

fter their set it was a mad dash across to the dance tent where we managed to catch the last couple of tracks by Nouvelle Vague which were 'ella Lugosi's dead' and 'Love will tear us apart'. I knew already that the name translated to New Wave in english but it's only on checking the link I just posted that I realised that the name translates to Bossa Nova in Portugese. As such they are perfectly named.

ater them it was Optimo in the dance tent. We watched the first half hour then nipped back to the main stage to catch The Beastie Boys but it was too busy so we headed back to th edance tent to catch th erest of Optimo.

that finished at Midnight and we decided not to bother checking out the smaller stages which were open until 2am. We were quite glad of that since it took the best part of an hour to get back to the car park andd another half hout to get to the B&B.