Part One

Trentishoe Free Festival, June and July 1973, was strictly for initiates into the counterculture. Official advertising was virtually non-existent; the festival was known through whispered word-of-mouth. Getting to know about, and attending, this gathering on the north Devon coast, was in itself like a rite of passage. We were there in the countercultural mix, deeply and officially, except that there was nothing official about anything or anyone at the time.

By now, in the incomprehensible way that things sometimes happen, our ranks had been swollen by the inclusion of one Jimmy Keys. Jimmy, it quickly became clear to me, was far more worldly-wise than the rest of us, and knew his way around the myriad aspects of the alternative scene. Though only a year older than me, he hadn't spent the last two years faffing around at university. He came well-soaked, not only in the counterculture, but in the ups and downs of life in general.

To our immense advantage, Jimmy had a spacious flat in Redland, the student quarter of Bristol, so we could spread sleeping bags on his living room floor the night before heading west - to the golden west.

Part Two

With a spring in our step we walked into the north Devon evening. The sinking sun suffused hedges, fields, and trees with a multi-tinted green transparency, before disappearing behind huge billowing clouds, leaving variegated golden auras around the cloud rims. All the time we were conscious of the sea nearby, far below the dark cliffs and shimmering in that magical time before twilight. The Universe was putting on a show of colour and wonder in welcome. It was a marvellous moment.

From the standpoint of the early twenty-first century, it can be hard to grasp the hope, optimism, and fervour, that accompanied the sense of possibilities which infected some, at least, in that alternative scene of the early 1970s. For me, walking into the Trentishoe sunset was a landmark. For the first time, I was off the circuit, below the radar, with people of similar aspiration. I was where I was intended to be. It was the happiest moment of my life.

The intervening decades have been largely devoted to beating and bludgeoning this sense of the infinite possibilities of life out of existence. Thatcher's materialism, endless wars on terrorism, reining in, tightening up, fear, fear, fear. The horizons of many young people today seem incredibly narrow, though there remain some who have been curiously immune to the mind control that runs riot through the global population.

Just as we were beginning to tire, an open-backed truck pulled up the rough dirt track, kicking dust high into the air. Holding on for dear life in the back was a familiar figure. If there was a person who embodied the attitudes and appearance of the classic 1973s freak, it was Charles Chapple. Dark, not-quite straight hair falling well below the shoulders; matching moustache and tiny beard; thin John Lennon glasses; the slim male frame typical of the age, almost devoid of muscle yet sculpted and brimming with vitality. I thought it was great.

I knew Charles from Oxford. In truth, I expect I knew him far better than he knew me. He was one of the prominent figures in the local alternative scene, where he was unusually active, always organising or publicising some event or another.

Bumping hideously up the old dirt track towards the festival, we got into conversation. "How's the festival organisation going, Charles?" "There's been a lot of strychnine and acid around. We haven't got very much done" came the cryptic reply. 

My eyebrows raised in a silent but barely-concealed gesture of disapproval. What's everyone doing, sitting around taking psychedelics, when there's a revolution to be organised, a counterculture to be fed, sheltered, and provided with suitable music for its radical earholes? I had never taken acid, and relied on rumour and the BBC for most of what I knew, but it didn't seem to be helping out very much in changing the world at Trentishoe.   

Once at the festival site, me and my self-righteousness began to calm down. John 'Work, Work, Work' Calvin went back to sleep, and I started (as we all did) to sink into the quiet magic that was Trentishoe free festival.

Despite the acid and strychnine, a little village of tents, tepees, yurts, and assorted other makeshift shelters had sprung up; free food stalls and kitchens were up and running; a stage complete with electric gear was ready to rock. Over the next few days I felt privileged to be part of an experiment in communal living, an experience which fuelled our dreams for the years to come. For a time, at least, we were out of the loop, the circuit had been broken. A sense of timelessness descended upon the festival, where the vicious and idiotic power games that filled the pages of newspapers and the prime-time programmes on television seemed irrelevant. We were, indeed, creating a different reality.  

The politics of the gathering, if we can talk of politics at all in this context, was anarchist. Communal rather than power-based, non or very loosely hierarchical, with organisation arising then dissolving in response to immediate needs. Communication the name of the game. Fluidity, self-governance, personal responsibility. We saw it happening, as the festival organised its food, its shelter, its support for those in need of assistance. Trentishoe demonstrated one thing: it could be done.

Part Three

The second evening of our stay, a few of us were wandering casually around the tents and campfires. Erica had disappeared soon after our arrival, but now turned up again. She was sitting on the grass with another girl, who I hadn't seen before. Erica was gazing serenely into somewhere, barely clocking our existence. She seemed hardly here at all, but simply sat still with the faintest of beatific smiles illuminating her face. "She's tripping" volunteered Jimmy Keys helpfully. "I'd trip too, if I had any acid."

Acid was never very far from conversation. Demonised relentlessly in the mainstream, it acquired a special mystique among certain elements of the serious counterculture. I sensed that there was a divisive aspect to the LSD question. The acid-heads spoke about it reverently. They seemed to form their own exclusive club, as if they 'knew' something that was hidden from the others. While the non-acid-heads, sometimes even anti-acid-heads, shook their heads in barely-concealed disapproval, contempt even, at those who had become sidetracked by the psychedelic dream. Some of their attitudes verged on overt hostility. I couldn't figure it out.

Tripping, stoned, or straight, participants at the festival could not fail to be awed by the Trentishoe location. Just the shortest walk from the tents and brown rice stalls found you atop precipitous dark cliffs, tumbling to the great sea crashing against the rocks far far below. The relentless, rhythmic movements of white-crested waves formed a magnificent and fitting backdrop to the human goings-on at the festival - which normally didn't amount to very much.

Panic-mongers of the time were fond of talking about how LSD induced delusions of flying, and how users would jump out of windows on top floors of buildings for a final climactic trip onto the walkways far below. Were this the case, you might have expected half the freaks at Trentishoe to end up mangled on the rocks hundreds of feet below the festival cliffs. I scanned the rocks carefully, but there didn't appear to be any recently-deceased long-hairs down there at all. Funny that....

Part Four

A persistent rumour was going around the festival: Hawkwind might be coming down tomorrow. Tomorrow turned into the day after, then the day after that. Still no Hawkwind. The moment arrived when we decided we couldn't spend the entire summer waiting for Hawkwind, who may or may not eventually turn up. I didn't even like Hawkwind very much. It was time to leave.

Goodbye Trentishoe, hello 'normality'. It was a bit of a jolt to re-enter the abnormal world that was considered the way to live.

Hitch-hiking out of Devon, Liberty Fox and I encountered a freak sitting by the side of the road. Sunburnt, unkempt, he looked a little the worse for wear. "I'm trying to get a lift" he replied to our query about his being there. "How long have you been trying?" "Two days."

He smiled broadly, a genuine but empty smile. He had an 'I'm cool about it, and I'm cool about everything' aura about him. It was our first, but by no means last, meeting with what Liberty termed the 'one trip too many' syndrome. Folk who seemed to have got stuck somewhere between Basingstoke and eternity; who could not, or chose not to, effect a proper return to 'normality', but instead dangled uncertainly in some uncharted in-between land. What future lay ahead for them, goodness only knows. Sometimes, like this Devonshire freak, they looked happy enough with their fate. To we, oh-so-sensitive souls, it was always an unsettling sight.     

Resources

The best source by far of information on this little-documented episode of alternative history is 'Albion Dreaming' by Andy Roberts. He documents thoroughly and absorbingly the 1970s counterculture in Britain, particularly its psychedelic aspects. It was almost with a sense of relief that I read his account of the free festivals of the early 1970s: "It did really happen, I wasn't just making it up, after all." I notice that the book has become something of a collector's piece. It can be found here, amongst other places:  https://www.abebooks.co.uk/           

Another great resource is the website www.ukrockfestivals.com   Lots of great photos and reports. Trentishoe can be found in the 'free festivals and fayres 1960s and 1970s' section.

Photos: From the collection by Ajackdawintheattic on Pinterest.