THE sun shone on the first day of a new health and wellbeing festival.

Dame Kelly Holmes officially opened the first ever Refresh Festival, being held at Wellington Country Park, between Basingstoke and Reading, this morning.

Refresh is the first festival of its kind for the region where the health, well-being and fitness industry are all collaborating in one place providing a vast range of activities, workshops and product trials.

This includes a variety of personal trainers, instructors and fitness experts, therapists, nutritional advisers, healthy food suppliers and a range of fitness clothing companies.

Today featured a huge array of entertainment, group workout sessions, talks and demonstrations, including from Basingstoke's own England's Strongest Woman and the fourth strongest woman in the world Farah Fonseca and The Singing Dentist, across four arenas, stages and tents and eight overall zones.

Elsewhere, group fitness sessions including crossfit, bootcamps, yoga, zumba and dance were also held, as were cooking demonstrations and talks from influential bloggers and food industry entrepreneurs.

Refresh has been created by Basingstoke event management and technical company H-Productions and continues tomorrow with tickets available.

For more information about the festival and tomorrow's line-up, go to refreshfestival.co.uk.

For a full report from the festival, see this week's Gazette.