Many thanks to all the loyal readers who came along this weekend to the triumph of art and science that was the First Move festival at Jodrell Bank.

As we explained a few weeks ago, the magnificent radio telescope at Jodrell Bank was a experimental labour of love. One of its many innovations was that it designed to rotate at its base and tilt its dish, and thus point at any part of the sky. After years of work, it finally managed this trick in June 1957, fifty years ago.

We and our friends at Jodrell Bank decided that what the dish would really want to celebrate its birthday was not cake or trinkets but a literary festival in its pretty grounds.

And so, this weekend, we held one. We kicked off with Alan Garner, author of children's classic The Owl Service. He lives near enough to see the telescope looming out of the mist from his garden, and gave a talk on his investigations into the rich legends of the area, where he has lived all his life. It was fascinating, the result of many years of thought and testament to the strength of legend. Based on his research, evidence of Bronze Age settlements have now been found in the area.

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Background

• Phase by Joanna Clark

• First word: Erica Wagner

• Her word: Jeanette Winterson

Related Internet Links

• First Move Festival blog

A real treat for the literati followed as Ian Morison gave a talk that was perfectly designed for the eager arty types in the audience. We would love to understand the workings of deep space but don't really have the mental infrastructure that, say, A-level maths or a degree in physics might have provided. Carefully he guided us through a new world of pulsars, quasars and the bending of space and time by very dense objects. It was enthralling. He also told us about the history of the telescope- it place in the space race, its financial woes and the way the engineers built it from left over gun turrets from WWII battleships.

Saturday dawned amazingly rainy, causing your correspondent to arrive at the festival- Glasto style- in wellies. But at one o'clock, in plenty of time for our favourite telescope's dancing display, the rain lifted and the sun came out. With much Tannoy banter between the control centre and organiser Tim O'Brien, the giant dish rotated, tilted and spun on its every axis in a vast and slightly spooky display of the power it has to look anywhere in the sky.

A few weeks ago, our literary editor Erica Wagner and columnist Jeanette Winterson had been allowed to climb around in the dish of the telescope. In the evening, Jeanette gave a powerful talk that included a reading from her, as yet unpublished, new book. Much to the delight of the astronomers, she has given the telescope a starring role. Two lovers, far in the future, stumble upon the vast, disused telescope and detect a mysterious radio signal...It was a very moving passage an accompanied by an impassioned talk, and was enjoyable and impressive for everyone there. It was followed by another excellent science talk by Tim O'Brien, who played us sonic interpretations of waves from black holes and solar winds as well as showing us an image of the sun, as eclipsed by Saturn.

The main event of Sunday was the Moonbounce, which we got so excited about, we had to share it with the world immediately. You can read our blog on it here. However, also worth mentioning is the great treat that Erica and I had in the hiatus between the afternoon and evening events. Tim and Theresa, who had toiled ceaselessly at the festival's organisation, let us take a trip into the dish of the telescope. We went up rickety lifts, along vertiginous walkways and, erk, up ladders. It was all rather terrifying, with a view of the ground a long way down, until we emerged into the middle of the dish. It was like being an ant in a bowl. The ground and the Cheshire plain had disappeared, and all there was was the vast white dish and the angry-looking sky. The birdsong was muffled, the real world seemed very far away, and we lay back on the gentle parabola of the dish and looked at the sky. A composer friend took a picture of us as he perched at the very tip of the receiver.

The novelist Jed Mercurio rounded the festival off by talking about his new book Ascent, a tale of Russians on the Moon. It was a fitting end to a weekend that combined science and art for the edification and fun of all.

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