I think they often clash. It has to do with the way the dates for the festivals are defined. Sidmouth is the first week in August, but I think that's defined as including the first Monday in August, and Cambridge is presumably the last weekend in July, based on the last Saturday or Sunday.

I'm sure they've overlapped before - we had to turn down an offer to perform in the Cambridge club tent one year because of that.

If Sidmouth moved later, the sequence Sidmouth-Broadstairs-Whitby would occasionally overlap by a whole week which would be worse.

Anyway, Sidmouth is full of morris teams, social dancers, ceilidhs, workshops and traditional folk concerts; Cambridge is a semi pop festival with Radio 2 stars and a bit of folk as a side-show. There's not a great deal of overlap in audiences between the two.

Anahata