Page 17 - MarketTimesOctober2016
P. 17

     Market trader Deanne Young (right) is pictured with her sister, Karen Waite, who was helping her with her colourful, plus size women's fashion business which goes down a storm at Towersey Festival
Fee Cooke of the Wiltshire Bee Centre is pictured (left) in her tent where she sells bee-related products and gives festival goers a better understanding of bees
Vicky Whitehead and Kevin Thompson are pictured preparing the pizzas they cook on their wood fired stove and serve at the festival
festival enjoying some street food when it suddenly occurred to me that this would be something that would be easy and good fun to do,” Vicky said.
Easy it was not, but the couple thoroughly enjoy the lifestyle and wouldn’t change how they earn their living.
“We did a lot of research and Kevin went to work for a vegan food producer where he started cooking pizza which went down really well,” Vicky said.
The first mobile wood-fired oven they bought was a disaster, but eventually they got there
and they now pride themselves on their mouthwatering pizzas made from local ingredients, including mushrooms from a grower in their village and wild parsley they pick themselves.
“Every festival is different,” Vicky said. “This one is local to us, but at Glastonbury there is a huge wholesale market on site to serve the food traders and I can’t praise them enough. This year they were wheelbarrowing the fresh produce through the mud.”
Mud — and the rain that causes it — is one of the big drawbacks to market trading at
festivals.
Steve said: “We try and keep the rents down
for traders who return after a wet festival the year before, because it does affect trade.”
But the market at Towersey Festival was full this year, and a baking hot weekend made for a fantastic event and happy traders.
And every trader agreed that the atmosphere at festivals was special. “It really is an experience to trade here. Everyone is chilled out and the traders are particularly friendly and help each other out all the time,” said Susie Francis.
 FACTS & FIGURES
 l When: Towersey Festival takes place every year from Friday to Sunday at the end of August
• Rent: Towersey is one of the less expensive musical festivals to stand. Traders are charged by the metre frontage. They
each get 15 metre depth and a power supply. If they can provide their own accommodation within that 15 metres,
there is no additional camping fee.
l About: Staged in the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside close to the market town of Thame, Towersey Festival has been
held for the past 52 years and has evolved from mainly folk to a more eclectic mix of mainly acoustic music and singer songwriters. It is a family-friendly music festival that attracts up to 10,000 people over three days. There are three camp sites and three separate stages, all under cover. Other attractions include the market area and an activity area for children. One quirky tradition is that some men dress up as women on the last night, which dates back to 1990 when a hen party was short of females, so the bride encouraged the men to dress up as women.
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