We're back from the Leeds Festival now. Unfortunately a lot of the bands suffered from poor sound quality, especially on the main stage where the sound was sometimes muffled or microphones weren't working so vocals were inaudible.

Highlights include:

• Tenacious D put on a good show.
• The Plain White Ts, who were blessed with a rare moment of good sound quality.
• A singer/comedian called Stephen Lynch in the Alternative Tent. We had never heard of him but the tent had filled up with many fans who sang along with him.
• The Manic Street Preachers, who headlined the NME tent on the Sunday. Their set consisted almost entirely of Greatest Hits and old favourites, which is what you want at a festival.

This years festival was muddier than any Leeds I've been to before. I've ended up with a 'welly tan', where my legs have only tanned in a band around my knees.

Click on the thumbnail to view the image

We were away at the weekend, up north to a friends wedding. The drive up was terrible - the M6 was a slow crawl nearly all the way from Birmingham up to Junction 17, where the motorway was closed due to an accident.

We stopped at Stafford Services on the way, and had a walk by the lake.

The wedding went well. Despite all the rain, it stayed dry for the photos after the service. The reception was held in a marquee at the groom's parent's farm. We were supposed to be camping in a nearby field overnight but we had to delay pitching out tent thanks to the non-stop rain this morning. We managed to get the tent erected in the afternoon but it needed both of us - one to stop the tent blowing away while the other pushed the tent pegs into the ground.

Here is a selection of photographs from this years Leeds Festival.  

Click on the thumbnail to view the image

It wasn't a great start: on arrrival at the festival site, we were waved into the first entrance we got to. It turned out to be the 'drop-off only' gate rather than the car park. I, along with many other people, had to navigate through a maze of unsignposted tracks to the correct car park.

We arrived much earlier this year, so managed to get a better spot for the tent, closer to the arena. After exchanging our tickets for the wristbands which are needed to get into the arena itself, we had a wander around the 'shopping village' area. We bought ourselves a couple of cheap folding chairs (2 for £10) to replace the ones we bought last year. We were going to bring the old ones with us but we left them outside in the rain at home. They weren't ruined but were too wet to bring with us.

As we got back to the tent, there was a loud and impressive thunderclap and it started to rain. We retreated into the tent and the rain got louder. It wasn't until we left the tent that we found out it was actually hailstones.

The festival proper doesn't start until tomorrow night. After our tea (of bbq'd chicken) we checked out the shops in the arena. They were mostly clothes and there was nothing which really caught our eyes. We went back to our tent for a few glasses of wine.