In Einstein's Garden

When we decided to transport 23 people, 20 bikes, 10 instruments, a van-load of sound equipment, a few tents and a film camera to a field in Wales, we thought a pedal powered, gig at a festival sounded like a good idea.

When we arrived at Green Man in the pouring rain and started to look for reclaimed wood to build our open-air stage in the pouring rain we did wonder whether our idea was such a good one.

But sitting under a tree, drinking tea and feeling soggy we remembered that the whole point of Do The Green Thing is to use Creativity to fight Climate Change and decided we couldn’t let a random winter storm in the middle of August defeat us.

We made friends with the amazing Sustrans gang – introduced to us by the unstoppable Colin I-know-everyone-and-can-also-fix-anything Tonks from Electric Pedals. Colin and Sustrans were powering the mobile charging service at Green Man and so we agreed that once the shop was shut at 7pm we would bundle in the tent with Orlando Seale and the Swell, set up the instruments, check the sound, gather an audience and get going in the 46 minutes before sun set. We had bikes waiting, band ready, umbrellas open, anoraks on, tea on the boil and signage up by 6.59.

And then at 7pm on the dot, the rain stopped, the sun came out, the band hooked up their instruments, people began to pedal and the music began to play. By 7.30 we were in full swing – undressed, beers in hand, clapping and stomping the crowd got stuck in to the mud, the music and the mayhem and the film just sort of made itself. Like magic.

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