Thank you for your many responses. It is a tough call, but I would like to give the casting vote to tradition, and that's the weekend we have the Eurogathering. As several have commented, any weekend will be bad for some or many reasons, and I would also suggest that the higher airfares those avaricious airlines screw out of us during school holidays may even deter more international visitors.

Sure, it's a bad weekend for May Pole manufacturers, anarchists, even unrecontructed socialists (the un-New), and I acknowledge the other festivals around the place, but what we are doing with this particular festival is continuing our own tradition, however young, and hoping to attract both veteran Eurogatherers and other curious Mudcatters, rather than empty Upton on Severn or Whitby. Thus the invitation to Americans, Canucks, Argentinians, Icelanders, Japanese and Australian Mudcatters (forgive me if I have not listed your non-European country). The other festivals are not Mudcat gatherings, so this one should not interfere with their adherents.

As my good friend (and awful bedmate) the Viking has poetically stated, we have made certain well worthwhile sacrifices to attend these gatherings, and if we are as relatively few in number as some Mudgathers, I can only dream that we will be as strong in spirit.

Greg