The Linton Music Festival, now in its 13^th year is held in the grounds of the Alma Inn, Linton, Ross on Wye, Herefordshire. Twice awarded CAMRA pub of the year for Herefordshire (2002 and 2005) and featured in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide. 

The rear of the pub provides the perfect venue for the music and real ale festival.  Rows of straw bales are provided for seating on land that gently slopes down to a permanent purpose-built stage.  This natural amphitheatre and the professional sound system ensure a good view and great sounds for everyone.  Surrounding the amphitheatre are a series of tents and marquees to provide cover in the event of rain.  Sitting above the amphitheatre on the site of the Alma’s car park is the catering area.  A wide range of food was available, suitable for all tastes including a barbecue, hog roasts, cake and coffee stall and Indian, Chinese and vegetarian cuisine.  The bear tent offered a wide range of superb real ales, lager, cider and soft drinks. 

There were large car parks just a few minutes stroll from the venue and disabled parking at the front of the Alma Inn.  Camping was available for £10.00 per night or £18.00 for the whole festival.  Merchandise was available adjacent to the stage and the volunteers of the St John’s Ambulance had little to do other than administer Paracetamol for headaches and a case of toothache!  Back stage artistes were given a warm welcome in the hospitality tent, which included a fine array of fresh foods (quite a rare treat these days!). 

The music was broad-based ranging from funk and soul through to the blues - as a ‘music’ festival, there was something for everyone.  The committee are to be congratulated for their organisational skills in generating an atmosphere of well-being for the event and building a strong base from which to take the festival further.  The quality and range of music, catering, parking, band turnaround, overall timing, ticket sales, P/A and M/C’s ran smoothly with only a few delays, a generator failure on Friday evening (necessitating the use of the stand-by generator for the rest of the evening) and a short on-stage sound balancing problem on Saturday.  All in all a very enjoyable and well run festival.

The festival is a non-profit-making event and donations are made to various local causes and charities.  The festival sponsors are to be thanked for their generosity and support.  Thank you and well done Linton! 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT 

Just think:- 2,500 festival goers, staff, guests, volunteers and artists over the 3-day festival. 

Fact:- over 1,000 pork baps, 200 jumbo sausages, 500 cheeseburgers, 400 faggots and chilli meals. 

Unknown quantities of:- pasties, pies, sausage rolls, Indian, Chinese and veggie meals, cakes and pavlovas. 

Consumption of:- 8,280 pints of real ale; 1,152 pints of cider; 1,080 pints of lager. 

Unknown quantities of:- soft drinks, tea and coffee. 

On Reflection:- 1,500 gallons of human waste removed from the festival site over the weekend along with 80 bulging domestic-sized bin bags of rubbish.