07/09/26 - Worcestershire Cakes and Ales - Stage 1 - British Camp to Upton-upon-Severn

Chasing our sheep, waving a machete, shouting "Meat"The second stage of the Cakes and Ales book takes me across Castlemorton Common. A name that will be of significance to ravers, hippies and New Age Travellers of a certain age.Castlemorton Common in Worcestershire became the unlikely epicentre of Britain’s early-1990s free-party movement when an estimated 20,000–40,000 people descended on the common over the late May Bank Holiday in 1992, following the police disruption of the Avon Free Festival. For almost a week, sound systems including Spiral Tribe and DiY provided a huge, largely uncontrolled outdoor rave of techno, acid house and free-party culture. The sheer scale of the event—and the intense media coverage and political alarm it generated—turned Castlemorton into a symbol of a supposedly lawless youth counterculture. It was not the sole cause of the government's subsequent crackdown, but it provided the perfect political pretext: the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994…