Fyne Dining at Connect

This year’s Hydro Connect Festival may have musically swapped leftfield for lad rock (last year Bjork, and MIA playing the main stage - this year Paolo Nutini and Kasabian? Mmmm, thanks) but thankfully it continues to lead the revolution in upmarket festival scran that was a big USP in 2007.

Nestled next to Inverary Castle, the festival is in such a bountiful location - rife with seafood, wild game and even wilder craft brewers - that given the more boutiquey, ’mature’ demographic the organisers want to attract, it would have been foolish not to capitalise on it.

The Circuses & Bread field, serving only food produced in the immediate surrounds, is the collective brainchild of organisers DF Concerts and Fergus Younger, Argyll Area Agricultural Strategy Development Manager (and owner of the world’s longest business card).

Whilst having a ‘green policy’ is the glib festival buzz phrase of summer 2008 - as if having biodegradable tent pegs is going to offset the carbon emissions of jetting Jay-Z and entourage from LA - the notion of cutting food miles and putting money squarely into the palms of local retailers is a realistic, ethically consistent idea that doubles up as a genuinely pleasurable experience for festival goers, food suppliers and Mr. Planet.

‘We wanted to create an enjoyable, exciting atmosphere‘ says Fergus - far from being a po-faced government-style initiative, Circuses & Bread is unashamedly pitched as a destination within the festival, getting equal billing alongside the likes of Club Noir and BBC Radio Scotland’s YourSound Bandstand. Over the three days, the field will see the shucking of thousands of Loch Fyne oysters and the pouring of hundreds of pints of Highlander and Vital Spark from the Fyne Brewery, housed in an abandoned milking parlour in Cairndow. After sundown, campers can go down the comfort food route and give themselves an entirely legal mellow high with a hot foil tray of Bumble Pudding’s legendary sticky toffee and a nip of Loch Fyne’s own blended malt.

So how does organic go down with a music festival crowd - a social group historically fuelled by lukewarm mysteryscrotumhell burgers and bottles of piss-weak lager which exist largely to be topped up with actual piss and flung at My Chemical Romance?

‘It’s not just foodies that are passionate about what they eat anymore’ Fergus points out, ‘it‘s great to see groups of people chatting about their spicy mussels’. The unique feedback that producers receive from the curious festival goers makes it an invaluable experience for them too, he adds. All stalls will be manned by the cheesemongers, the fishmongers, the bakers themselves (rather than sullen teenagers begrudgingly giving you a £3 poke of chips) and they certainly seem to enjoy the challenge of finding new ways to satisfy the hungry throngs. This year, Winston Churchill Venison will be debuting a new pie made especially for clutching in your hot little hands as you move from stage to stage. Their meat is as organic and free range as you can get, stalked wild as they romp around the Argyll countryside - just try not to feel too guilty as you merrily tuck in that you’ve deprived Bambi of the chance to listen in on Duffy.

Hydro Connect is by no means entirely self-sustaining. The international big guns of the beverage worlds will still be flexing their sponsorship muscles - witness The Red Bull Forest Party and Kopparberg‘s One Big Tree - and it would be impossible for smoked salmon alone to sustain the tens of thousands of people who’ll be hitting Argyll in August. With Fergus in talks to take a similar package to T in The Park, Circuses & Bread is a pioneering step in the right direction of helping festivals engage with, rather than anonymously trampling on, their natural surroundings.