A new venue for a weekender, although google streetview did allow a glimpse of the town before arriving. A very standard garish seaside view, but at least the accommodation seemed to fit in quite well. On arrival, it looked OK. Lots of tiny bungalow chalets which although very very basic, were clean and well enough maintained. Certainly not 5 star, but also not reminiscent of the Southport prison block style.

The dance venue seems quite well laid out – One building with bar/lounge, blues room, dining room and WCS room, then main room in another building about 50 yards walk outside. Each room has a bar, and the 2 secondary rooms are a reasonable size.

Good points were:

• Blues room layout, and good sized proper dance floor
• Afternoon freestyles in the middle of the venue seemed to attract enough people
• Atmosphere seemed generally quite good
• Live band in the blues room on Sunday evening. Could have had maybe a little more slower, and less funky stuff, but I liked enough of it.
• Tango Milongas in the blues room every evening
• Afternoon sets were generally a good compromise for the people there.

Bad points were:

• Queues for dinner on Friday evening (venue not prepared for 500 people to eat), although the situation did improve significantly over the weekend.
• Lighting in the blues room. The approach seems to be to hope it will work, and not be prepared in case it doesn’t.
• Several blues room sets were a bit too monotonous, although there were enough good sets to almost make up for it. The only problem is deciding when to stay up till dawn, and when to give up in favour of sleep.

I didn’t do any classes, but the standard of dancing (at least in the blues room, and afternoons) seemed reasonable but without many people who stood out. Certainly it has potential, and I had enough really good dances to make it worth the effort, which was a pleasing surprise.

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More photos on Exchange and Mart

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Sara has another post on the JiveNites blog, discussing the path which has lead to this all weekend event. I’ve been going to events organised by Sara for too long to remember exactly (about 5). Not my first weekenders, but my first trips to the old Jive Addiction Southport, in the days when I wasn’t yet sure if the blues room was for me. Sara was so enthusiastic that I thought it was worth persisting with though.

My dancing has moved on since those days, and I now search out exclusively blues or tango-esque music, finding that many events do absolutely nothing for my dance mojo I do less dancing for more driving. Even Scotland for a weekend!

There might be more awareness of blues, but that seems to spread things out a little more, so it will be great to see who turns up this weekend and if we can manage to re-create the magic of a full weekend of blues room goodness. (It’s not quite 24 hour dancing, but I do prefer to be able to sleep at night, rather than work the night shift just because that’s when everyone thinks the best dancing is to be had).

I’m not competing this weekend (it just isn’t something that interests me), but I will be there taking a few photos and at all of the freestyles. (Fri, Sat, Sun).

Hope to see a few familiar faces at Buckden this weekend.