Summer Strum, Hoylake. July 2019


Summer Strum was great fun. It is a ukulele based music festival, done purely to raise money for charities in the Wirrall and Liverpool areas. It is also, unusually, free to enter.

Each year Hoylake Rugby club provides its grounds, clubhouse and a load of volunteers to put this on, and it was superbly well run. Even though the majority of musicians, volunteers and visitors were my age group, it was most definitely a family occasion - although teenagers were conspicuous by their absence! Of course, there was the usual collection of food, drink and trinket stands, and the clubhouse bar was well frequented.

There were no facilities (electric, water, toilet disposal etc) for motorhomes or caravans, but the field we were in gave us plenty of space.


 We made friends with the people in the two vans next to us - Brian and Mo in one, and Mike, Ann and a labradoodle called Gladys in the other. They all had recently taken up the ukulele. In this photo they are in the second row back next to a grumpy looking Ann!





On Friday evening, before the event started the next day, there was a welcoming party and mass ukulele jam session in the clubhouse. Rather cleverly, the organisers had produced a book of songs and chords that we could download beforehand, so everybody knew which key to be in.

It started raining in the small hours of Saturday morning, which did not bode well, but it was dry for the official opening at noon, although overcast and cool. The music carried on until midnight, although Ann and I left earlier because we were finding the long grass in the motorhome field was causing quite a drain on her scooter battery, and of course there was no electric hookup. So, the next morning was fortunately bright and I hooked her battery charger to our inverter, and was able to get enough juice into it for use on Sunday. Fortunately our solar panels soon made up for the drain on the leisure battery.

On Sunday morning there was another mass ukulele jam session, this time outside on a lovely sunny day.


The main bands started at noon and ran through to half past five. We stayed to the end, and were back home at nine o'clock, tired but happy!

Here's a little video of just some of the acts on the main and side stages. The sound quality isn't great from my little camera, but it is listenable.









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