MORE than 25,000 music lovers enjoyed a weekend of music, fun and sunshine at South Oxfordshire’s Truck Festival.

The feast of rock, pop and dance music came to a close on Sunday night, bringing to an end four days of fun at Hill Farm, Steventon, near Abingdon.

The event featured headline sets by big names likes Idles, Jamie T, Wet Leg and The Streets. It also saw shows by established stars like Sophie Ellis-Bextor and The Kooks and scores of new indie-rock acts.

Ferocious post-punk rabble-rousers Idles topped the bill on Thursday, playing for an audience of early-arrivals, and were hailed as a highlight of the festival.

Other high points included strong sets by Carterton’s garage-rocking, Americana-tinged singer-songwriter Willie J Healey; swaggering dancy Leeds alternative-rockers Yard Act; feisty Brixton rockers Fat Dog; and visceral Scottish punk-rap-rockers Vlure – whose show saw band members climbing up on the crowd barrier and diving into the moshing crowd.

Pictures by Tim Hughes

Quirky pop-rock act Wet Leg pulled in a huge crowd on Saturday night with their first festival headline set. The Brit and Grammy award-winning band, fronted by Isle Of Wight artists Rhiannon Teasdale and Hester Chambers, have polished their performance by joining Harry Styles on his stadium tour and warmed to the welcoming Truck crowd with a punchy set culminating in odd but engaging hit Chaise Longue.

Mike Skinner of The Streets proved the hero of the weekend, though, closing the main stage on Sunday night with a set of heartfelt homegrown hip-hop fused with dance, rock and lyrical narrative directed straight at the crowd.

It felt personal and intimate, honest and confessional as the Birmingham rapper upped and slowed the pace propelled by hard beats and smooth vocals, wrapping up with bouncy singalong hit Fit But You Know It, the low-key Blinded by the Lights, consolatory anthem Dry Your Eyes and Take Me as I Am.

The festival was started back in 1998 by musician brothers Robin and Joe Bennett of the bands Goldrush and The Dreaming Spires who grew up in Steventon (Joe still lives there). And while the brothers no-longer run the event, they do still host a tented stage featuring favourite acts who have played previous Truck festivals, along with up-and-coming newcomers.

The appropriately dubbed Veterans & Virgins stage captured the spirit and soul of Truck’s more intimate earlier incarnations, and treated an audience – graced by many familiar faces from the Oxfordshire music scene – to three days of rock, pop, acoustic folk, and soaring Americana.

The stage saw one of the big surprises of the festival – a ‘secret’ set by fan-favourite indie-punk-folkster Frank Turner, who packed the tent and much of the surrounding field.

It was closed on the Sunday night with a rousing finale by the Bennett’s upbeat country-rock band The Dreaming Spires.

The virtuoso collective delighted a crowd who, while being sleep-deprived, sunburnt and in some cases hungover, could not hide their love for the gentle musical souls, without whom, there would be no Truck Festival at all.

Roll on next year!