North Wales, Llandudno, Conway and the festival
North Wales was my very first attempt at "doing" a Bluegrass Festival. It was a bit of a disaster in some ways. I came all that way armed with a dobro and hardly got to play it. Next time I'm going to stay at the campsite so that I can jam all day and night! Along the top are some pictures of the city of Conwy where the festival was held. The first is from the window of the Llandudno-Conwy bus: I stayed in nearby Llandudno and had to rely on the bus to get to & from the festival, a big mistake as it turned out. That's because the last bus home to Llandudno goes just when the concerts have finished, leaving you no opportunity to get into jam sessions at the pub or the camping site afterwards. Even I, with my normal enthusiasm for exercise couldn't hack the prospect of a very windy 6-mile trot back late at night lugging a dobro in its case.

On the right are some pictures of the not nearly-nearby-enough seaside resort town of Llandudno. If it looks cold & grey that's because it was - windy & not much over 16 degrees! There's a good hilly run along the seafront cliffs then up to the Great Orme Lookout via the Bronze Age copper mine if you're that way inclined. And chair lifts & trams if you're not!
Quite interesting for an Oz boy like me to talk to people having their summer holiday there - what they did and how many years they'd been coming to the same spot. Building hotels down to the water's edge is not confined to Spain obviously - the Brits anyway were clearly at it more than 100 years ago.

The following two pages have more pictures and a sort of festival diary.

The North Wales Bluegrass website is at http://www.northwalesbluegrass.co.uk/