Well having had such a great time during our all too short stay at Beat Herder in 2008 we decided that the best cure for the post-Glastonbury blues would be another trip to the Ribble Valley in Lancashire. Not much has changed since last year. In fact judging by the somewhat rustic state of a lot of the little bars and sculptures a lot of things haven’t moved since we were here 12 months ago. However there was a greater choice in the way of food and the addition of new venues such as the ingeniously named “Yurt Reynolds” was welcome.

Beat Herder was able to attract some impressively well known names this year. Reverend and The Makers headlined the Friday night and Sunday’s line up was amongst the best I’ve seen for a festival of this size. Fancy Dress theme this year was “animals” although many chose an alternative theme in honour of local heroes Lancashire Hotpots, who unfortunately couldn’t be with us this year.

I’m afraid the somewhat excessive use of dry ice on the main stage made photography there rather challenging at times and so apologies for the fact that the images of some of the bands there aren’t quite up to the usual standard. The fact that there was no main stage compere also means that I’m guessing at the names of some of the acts so if anybody can correct me with any of these please leave a short comment.

We’ve got an unusually long mid-season gap now in our festival schedule but happy memories from Beat Herder will no doubt keep us going through the intervening weeks.