THE COMRADES Hall at Broadwindsor was jumping this week as John Jones from electric folk legends Oysterband took to the stage.

Around 175 people packed into the hall for a gig organised by Simon Emmerson of The Imagined Village fame.

Sadly, Phil Beer from Show of Hands couldn’t make it – he’s recovering from an operation – but the audience was charmed by the lovely, soaring voice and fiddle of award-winning folk artist Jackie Oates.

The event was the first in Jones’s Feet Don’t Fail Me Now walking tour from Lyme Regis to the Larmer Tree Festival on the Dorset-Wiltshire border.

In the weeks leading up to the tour, Dorset has been bathed in heat and sunshine. But on the day Jones and his merry band set out from Lyme, the fog descended and Broadwindsor – not unusually – was covered in a veil of mist.

Followers pitched tents in village gardens and fields as the reluctant ramblers made their way across the Wessex Ridgeway down into Broadwindsor.

A particular highlight was Jones and Oates’ version of the traditional song, Searching for Lambs.

Jones and his musicians had the audience spellbound – alternately hushed and lively – right until the end when they walked and sang quietly through the body of the hall towards the doors and into the night.

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