It turns out we’re not finished with festivals yet. I’ve spotted an ad for a local beer festival in a neighbouring village which looks to be hosting a lot of music as well as food. While it’s not far from us [just a few miles up the road], there’s no chance of getting home after an evening of beer without a loooong wait for a taxi [which we’ve done before[, And it so happens that there’s a site we can stay in very close to the host pub- The Three Tuns. It feels good to be using the van again, even if we’re sliding into autumn.

But by the time we’ve sprung into action, booking tickets and looking into staying, the site is very much booked up- due to the beer festival of course! We’re only staying three nights, however, and can manage without hook-up, so when we’re offered a pitch on the tent field we agree.

Bransgore is a large village on the fringe of the New Forest National Park and has seen an explosion of housing in recent years. It is popular, with a useful selection of shops, a couple of pubs, a primary school, cafes, a church and a garden centre.

We’re in luck, discovering when we arrive that a hook-up pitch has become available. W park up next to a caravan where a lone man is setting up. He’s from Manchester, waiting for his brother to join him. There’s also a group of young men pitching tents, a rugby club, Reading, as the text on their gazebo declares, so perhaps we’re the most local festival goers on the site. While it’s quite sunny, the temperature isn’t warm as it might be for early autumn and I’m glad of the van’s cosy heating system as well as impressed by the tent campers’ hardiness [though they are from a rugby club].

As twilight desends we make our way down to the pub. where the festival is well underway. There is a burger stall, which we intemd to patronise later, a large beer tent, its walls lined with beer barrels on one side and cider kegs on the other, a tent with a few tables and chairs and an enormous marquee from which music is already emanating. Having collected our tokens, we head to the beer tent to seek a menu for the beers and undertake the difficult job of choosing one. Husband is the beer connossieur of the two of us and I am the uncultured one, as I dislike anything too sharp and hoppy and prefer the richer, browner beers- or even a porter in the colder months. Neither of us, however goes for the mad, high-alcohol-content ones.

We’ve brought fold-up camp chairs with us and once we’re sorted with a drink we settle down to have a look at whatever band is playing. This is a local festival with local musicians. Mostly they’re playing covers, which is ok by me- except that I have an aversion to one or two songs that are variously overdone/not much good to start with. I object to ‘Brown-eyed Girl’ by Van Morrrison on the grounds that it has been done to death. I’m tired to death of Oasis’ ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ and I have always loathed ‘Your Sex is on Fire’ due to the idiocy of its lyrics. See what I mean?

We’re coping with burgers tonight- not generally a choice I make but a pragmatic decision springing from no desire to cook anything combined with not wishing to go backwards and forwards from site to festival. and there’s always tomorrow night…

Novels by Jane Deans [Grace]: The Year of Familiar Strangers and The Conways at Earthsend. Visit my website: janedeans.com