Day 4: Crickhowell
Welcome
Yesterday we flew from Norway to England and then drove to Wales to play at Green Man festival.
We left our hotel at 3.45am and took a taxi to Trondheim airport where we had arguably our best airport experience of the tour. The self-check-in kiosks had an easy and efficient user interface and the self-operated bag drop had a fool proof hand-held scanner that Jono used to full effect. Liz forgot to empty her water bottle before going through security but one of the officers was so nice that they took it away and emptied it for her. To top it off the terminal was small and quiet and contained ample public seating.For breakfast I had muesli with yoghurt and a berry smoothie.
Jono scans.
We arrived at Heathrow at 9am and had a smooth passage through immigration. Upon reaching baggage claim though we were struck with the tragic news that Liz's guitar was still in Oslo, which according to Beth of the day rules means that she unfortunately gets a minus one.We had to get to Wales though so we set off in our freshly hired Volkswagen Crafter that we soon named Alexvander The Great. Alexvander is powered by a 2.0 litre turbo diesel that boasts twice the fuel efficiency of our last van, and effortlessly drives the 2.5 tonne van along at up to moderate speeds.
This is also the first van we've had that features a table and rear facing seats, as modelled here by Liz and Tristan. Parkers.co.uk gave the Crafter 4 stars so we hope that Alexvander will live up to that on this tour.
Liz got her score back up to zero with a plus one for plugging a powerstrip with a NZ plug into an EU adaptor into a UK adaptor, and a USA usb charger into a NZ adaptor, to charge her phone.
Despite some rough traffic we made it to Green Man just in time for a quick soundcheck and then a performance to 2000 odd people packed inside a giant blue tent. Our friends from the band Peaness were also playing the festival and were generous enough to lend Liz a guitar. They will also be supporting us on all of our headline shows this tour. We were all completely exhausted after the set but we summoned our remaining energy to watch Marika Hackman's excellent performance.
Marika Hackman
Afterwards we drove a couple of hours to our hotel in Swindon where Tristan and I finished the night with our first pints of guiness of the tour.
Beth of the day goes to Ben for getting a wave from a houseboat, and having a Guiness nightcap. Well done Ben, you look happy to be back in the UK.
The results of yesterday's poll are in and the Skansen Rail Bridge is the winner with six votes! Congratulations Skansen and my condolences to of the losers of this competition.
