AFTER Tom Jones and Winchester’s Frank Turner got this year’s festival off to an awesome start, Saturday’s offering at the Larmer Tree Festival was a bill of perhaps less wellknown artists.

But this offered an ideal opportunity to expand your musical horizons and also try out some of the many workshops on offer at the perfectly sized, family friendly festival.

From Inter Africa’s pounding drum workshop to Bollywood dancing with Melanie Keen, a whole host of activities from around the world were on offer for festival- goers to try.

We joined the drum workshop and got into the rhythm as the warmth of the African beat managed to dispel any wet weather blues as the first of a few torrential rain showers fell outside the Big Top.

With the sun shining once more, wandering around the festival site was a great way to find some new bands.

Popping our heads into the Arc stage we found Hat Fitz and Cara, a music-making couple combining Australian blues with a little Irish folk which had everyone dancing.

Outside, Southampton’s Ukulele Jam brought their own brand of joy to the event with energetic performances of well-known hits entertaining crowds as they tucked into lunch in the food quarter.

The ensemble must have had some of the biggest cheers of the day for their brilliant performance.

But perhaps one of the stand-out performances of the day was Staff Benda Billi – a ten-piece band discovered living and playing outside a zoo in The Democratic Republic of Congo.

With four paraplegic members at the heart of the band, the “hype man” bounced around on his crutches and whipped the crowd into a frenzy as the band’s rumba sounds took hold.

Comedy pub quizzes, music from Public Service Broadcasting, La Chiva Gantiva and The Dodge Brothers saw Saturday evening draw to a close and headline comedy act Lee Nelson take to the Arc stage – a well good show!

On Sunday, the artistic work of children was showcased in the afternoon carnival.

This year’s theme was ‘peculiar creatures’ and the carnival specialists had gone allout to help them craft some wonderful mythical creations.

A giant pink jellyfish with horns and hair led the procession of youngsters clanging pots and pans, followed by a Samba band, a dragon and a seagull-mermaid.

Catalan seven-piece band La Petagina, warmed the chilledout afternoon audience on the garden stage with their physical interpretation of urban rumba and Irish brothers Hudson Taylor were a pleasing pre-cursor to Sunday night’s headline act with some folk pop covers.

Finally, the handsome, polite and fresh-faced Tom Odell bounced on stage to close a wonderful weekend of music and fun. Perching at his piano for an hour-long set, he opened with his huge 2013 hit I Know.

A younger than usual Larmer Tree audience danced and screamed “we love you Tom” as he declared that this was the loveliest festival he’d been to and showed his appreciation at playing in the beautiful, floodlit forest by rolling out flawless renditions of his hits Can’t Pretend, Grow Old With Me and Another Love.

His perfect piano playing was only slightly blemished during his cover of Elton John’s Your Song, but he did warn us that he’d only performed it once before, so we forgave him for that.

Sadly there was no encore but as he finished with some energetic and frenzied piano playing during the song Cruel, perhaps he’d worn himself out!