The Lost Arc is a music venue in the town of Rhayader in Wales. The building dates back to 1830 and it has been lovingly renovated in recent years by Len Carter and his family. From the car park, you hear the sound of the River Wye rushing by. You can read the history of the Lost Arc here.
This was the last show of this tour and the last live performance from Ray until his next tour in Germany in May 2025. He will tour Germany again in September 2025 and then return to the UK in November. See his website for details of upcoming shows.
The Lost Arc is a very welcoming venue. It brought in fans from Sweden and Oxford who had arranged holidays in the area so that they could also come to the show.
Post Tour Reflections
October 2024 saw Ray Cooper undertake two tours around the UK and I accompanied him on one and half of them. It was no mean feat to achieve this with Ray needing to be ready to perform any of 53 different songs over these two tours and his preceding tour in Germany the month before. The tours of Germany in September and the UK in October had been planned well before Oysterband asked him to join them for their last ever tour with June Tabor. Thanks to two understanding promoters moving two shows to November 2025, Ray was able to interleave the Oysterband tour with his own. You can read his post-tour thoughts here.
Having missed the start of the Oysterband tour, I then drove 1800 miles over the next three weeks to transport Ray and instruments to the venues. Ray played 19 venues and you can see his solo venues plus an outline of the driving in the two maps below.
It was an honour to witness the last ever shows of Oysterband with June Tabor and especially fitting that Ray should be a part of them. While it’s always sad when something so good comes to an end, I want to thank Dave Heppingstall for this quote: “Don’t be sorry that it’s over, be happy that it happened“
See you again in 2025.
A Visitor On Europe’s Roads 
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