The Good Life Experience (Day 1) - Cerys Matthews

I've been away in North Wales for 3 days as part of the photography team for the 4th annual Good Life Experience festival. I've had a blast, I've taken a lot of photos and I've barely slept a wink but I'm starting to work my way through the photo editing and will Back-Blip as I go…

Today's Blip subject is one of the Festival’s founders, Cerys Matthews. These days she's probably best known for her excellent radio show on BBC 6Music but I suspect she'll always be most famous for having been the front-woman with top Welsh band Catatonia - all together now, “It’s all over the front page, you give me road rage…” www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLE09VhGAZ8

She's proper-lovely, and couldn't be more approachable and helpful. It was a pleasure to meet her.

Cerys founded the Festival along with her husband Steve Abbott (the former singer with punk band UK Decay and now a music/media executive) and their friends Caroline and Charlie Gladstone. Caroline is a former designer for Laura Ashley and Charlie used to manage rock/indie bands before he and Caroline set up the online lifestyle/interiors business, Pedlars. They're also organic farmers. Oh, and Charlie is the great-great-grandson of the 4-time Prime Minister William Gladstone, in addition to being the great-nephew of the photographer Cecil Beaton!

The Festival is held in the grounds of the Gladstone family seat, Hawarden Castle in Flintshire, and it focuses on ‘music, food, books, ideas and the great outdoors’. It has a lovely, family atmosphere - part village fete (dog shows, a vintage funfair, cookery workshops), part artisan nirvana (ethically produced, locally sourced food, drink, clothes, bits and bobs aplenty), part cool local music venue and part literary festival. And, of course, bushcraft, foraging, axe throwing competitions, etc… There’s certainly something for everyone!

My job was to cover a list of specific acts, events and features of the festival but also to take pictures of anything else that took my fancy. I'll add a link to a selection once I've edited them all…

But, for now, my Extra Photos include some of my highlights from Day 1 - the American singer Joan Shelley and her bandmate Nathan Salsburg www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz9tZIV6ckY; Goumour Adam from the Tuareg/Algerian/French power trio Ezza www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlJA-1yNL-M; and another one of Cerys!