Perfect Day

The tent!

We couldn't have wished for a better day to do our stall test yesterday: Lashing rain, freezing cold and a strong wind that tested our tent-erecting skills and carried the gazebo (and us) several metres across the lawn until we came to a halt in front of the fire assembly point. Apart from that, and thanks to Frazer's infinite knowledge about gazebos, the set-up went pretty smoothly.

Helen is ready to swab

Once the roof was on and the tent firmly pegged to the ground, the stall was definitely the best place to be and we had everything in place and ready to go within an hour.

Filming 'whose poo'

Sarah & Will love 'whose poo'

We had set up in front of the catering hub on the Open University's main campus, so we had a few visitors despite the weather conditions and the bank holiday weekend ahead. We spent the first 1/2 hour being bossed around by an OU filming crew and doing little bits of 'action' for the camera. The final product should be pretty interesting!

Finally, we were free to wow the trickle of visitors with a live colony of bumblebees, our selection of animal poo and Matt's hand-crafted 'swab-throne'. 

The Associate Dean turned up - claiming to be looking for the Grateful Dead on the main stage - but was very happy to let us swab him (all in the name of science communication, of course), so we'll be posting a picture of the  microbial growth on his agar plate in a couple of days.

All in all, the final shopping list of 'missing kit' is quite short and we're really pleased with how things went. Now all we need to do is find enough space to dry out the tent in time for Wychwood festival next week!

P.S. We've got lots more photos to come, so keep an eye on our new photostream.
Many thanks to Luke Beaman from the Open University's Communications Team for the great group piks!

Happy Roadies!