Belle and Sebastian have announced a music-festival-cum-boat-cruise– The Boaty Weekender.

The four-day event, described as a “floating festival and luxury cruise around the Mediterranean”, will feature live several live sets from the band, as well as other invited acts selected by Stuart Murdoch and crew.

The band will perform 2000’s album ‘Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant’ in its entirety for the first time ever during the cruise, and will press a special vinyl reissue of the seminal release, for attendees only, to coincide with the trip.

Also on the agenda for the 2500 revellers on the Norwegian Cruise Line vessel will be Q&A sessions and panels, plus themed parties and the like.

The Boaty Weekender – named after the B&S-instigated ‘Bowlie Weekender’ festivals which became a regular fixture in the less-salubrious surroundings of a Butlins holiday camp – will take place from August 8 – 12, 2019, sailing from Barcelona to Cagliari in Sardinia before making the return journey to Spain.

The idea for a sea-based music festival has been on the radar of the band for a while now, with the Glaswegian indie legends surveying their fans last year on the form of event they would be interested in.

This would not be the first time that Scottish indie acts had planned a trip doon the waater. Aside from Mogwai’s now-legendary show at Rothesay Pavilion in 2001, a rather more exotic boat trip was mooted around five years ago when Snow Patrol’s former management team planned the ‘Offshore’ fest, with big names playing in the eastern Med. Sadly that never came to pass, the closest thing we now get is the ‘Back to the 80s’ boat, taking ABC and Tony Hadley out of Spandau Ballet from Southampton to Lisbon and back.

Anyway, the Boaty Weekender is taking bookings, at www.theboatyweekender.com