Bestival

Post by **el sketcho** » 19 Sep 2008, 07:53

Well it's only taken me nearly 3 weeks to post up pics of my bestival weekend but here we go.

When we saw the weather forecast we opted to camp off site down the road from Bestival. Glad we did.

[IMG:500:375]http://www.muchos.co.uk/members/elsketcho/DSC00327.jpg[/img]

This is what we were greeted with when we went down to the festival site on the friday night. Sorry about the photo very drunk

[IMG:500:375]http://www.muchos.co.uk/members/elsketcho/DSC00334.jpg[/img]

It was very muddy

[IMG:500:375]http://www.muchos.co.uk/members/elsketcho/DSC00361.jpg[/img]

Human scrabble, pick a letter on a pole, go and stand next another person with a letter and make a word. Sorry about the word but I thought it was funny

[IMG:500:375]http://www.muchos.co.uk/members/elsketcho/DSC00352.jpg[/img]

Here we are drinking bloody marys in the awning before venturing out into the mud and rain. I'm taking the photo

[IMG:500:375]http://www.muchos.co.uk/members/elsketcho/DSC00331.jpg[/img]

And the last one speaks for itself

[IMG:500:375]http://www.muchos.co.uk/members/elsketcho/DSC00348.jpg[/img]

All in all a good weekend was had. The van perform excellently, except for the skylight leaking a bit during the very worst of the rain and the awning had a slight leak on the seam that attaches to the gutting.

Andy

Post by **hightower** » 19 Sep 2008, 11:27

Andy

You have way too much money to waste

how much were the tickets?? are you sure thouse pics are not from vanfest

We were going to do the camp bestival (i think thats what it was called) that was being held at Lulworth Castle in Dorset but tickets were about £120 each plus £50 for the pleasure of camping in our van (free in a tent), same price we paid for our week in spain

Post by **el sketcho** » 21 Sep 2008, 17:35

hightower wrote:Andy

You have way too much money to waste how much were the tickets?? are you sure thouse pics are not from vanfest

We were going to do the camp bestival (i think thats what it was called) that was being held at Lulworth Castle in Dorset but tickets were about £120 each plus £50 for the pleasure of camping in our van (free in a tent), same price we paid for our week in spain

Yep £120 was the price and we paid the extra £50 for the van then opted to camp off site

It's all fun and games tho

Went to Vanfest the following week just for the day as the wife was adamant she wasn't spend two weekends in the van in the rain.
I wanted to go to Camp Bestival this year because the Flaming Lips were playing, but it's more geared up for families and children. I couldn't think of anything worse than waking up with a hangover with loads of screaming kids around the van

Post by **Therunner** » 22 Sep 2008, 08:26

I can be expensive, we did 3 this year, but only cos one was flooded out and cancelled and we were offered tickets to another as compensation!

Every festy we went to this year was muddy, some more than others! The last 2 weekends have been the only dry one's since May!

We're having a 7th birthday party festival stylie - tents, flags and muscal instruments for the kids to makeloads of noise

- next saturday, really hoping the weather holds.

Melvin

Post by **plurker** » 22 Sep 2008, 10:14

Therunner wrote:I can be expensive, we did 3 this year, but only cos one was flooded out and cancelled and we were offered tickets to another as compensation!

big chill wasn't muddy thankfully, and neither was festinho - warmest weekend of the summer imho.

they are expensive yes, but having worked in festival production for the last 6 years, I can tell you that the production costs are immense and not all of them make much money. and in this fickle-weathered country, a week of poor weather can bankrupt any event company.

Post by **Therunner** » 22 Sep 2008, 12:10

You're right, Big Chill was the least muddy, in fact it only rained twice and then ony for a relatvely short time

I can appreciate that a large amount of the budget goes on some of the big names that appear. For us tho, it's the atmosphereore than the bands (most of whom we manage to miss

) and so we're looking at attending more smaller festies next year

Melvin

Post by **High Peaker** » 22 Sep 2008, 13:18

We went to Chagstock, near Okehampton - about as small as a festival can be before it becomes a garden party!
I think it was around £50 each, but still had some biggish names - Hot House Flowers, Show of Hands, and Thea Gilmore. Very nice weekend.

Camper was broken, so had to remember what a tent was like to sleep in.

Post by **el sketcho** » 22 Sep 2008, 15:38

Therunner wrote:You're right, Big Chill was the least muddy, in fact it only rained twice and then ony for a relatvely short time

I can appreciate that a large amount of the budget goes on some of the big names that appear. For us tho, it's the atmosphereore than the bands (most of whom we manage to miss ) and so we're looking at attending more smaller festies next year

Melvin

Went to the Big Chill last year and loved it. Couldn't go this year so we went to Bestival instead. Melvin if you loved Big Chill check out Bestival, the atmosphere is the same, happy friendly people.

Post by **android** » 22 Sep 2008, 21:12

Bestival was still super good even tho it was a mudbath wellies were part of my fancy dress anyway

we were there for the week helping with the build so put up with a whole week of slushy mud!
best thing i saw all week was a syncro skiping through the mudiest mud on site while all other 4wd's were sliding about all over the place

I also worked at waveform the weekend after and had to get towed onto the site the day after leaving bestival(managed to get out of that mud ok).Waveform was also a brilliant weekend, 24hr music licence was a bit much tho.also had to get towed off waveform site and nearly lost my bumper for it

have to expect a bit of mud at these festi's nowdays and its good for the legs anyways

Post by **Therunner** » 22 Sep 2008, 22:00

Actually we didn't like the Big Chill, it was too much like Glastonbury 2 for us.

We went because we had the offer of a swap for our Sunrise tickets after Sunrise was cancelled and because Leonard Cohen was playing

Melvin

Post by **simoncummins** » 24 Sep 2008, 20:59

Try Farmer Phils Festival at Long Mynd Shropshire. £40 and you can camp fpr a week before and a week after.
http://www.farmerphilsfestival.co.uk/

Post by **Therunner** » 25 Sep 2008, 09:10

We went to Chagstock, near Okehampton - about as small as a festival can be before it becomes a garden party!
I think it was around £50 each

Try Farmer Phils Festival at Long Mynd Shropshire. £40 and you can camp fpr a week before and a week after.
http://www.farmerphilsfestival.co.uk/

Cool, both of those are now on my list as possibles for next year then

Cheers

Melvin

Post by **simoncummins** » 26 Sep 2008, 17:14

This one was good as well.
http://www.syphnet.streamlinenettrial.c ... ntPage.php

Post by **DevonAid** » 27 Sep 2008, 07:03

Sorry someone here didn't enjoy the Big Chill. We went this year for the first time and absolutely loved it. Good music, good friends, good weather - spot on. Something for everyone I thought, with lots of non-music events and activity too. Roll on next year!

Post by **Hypnovan** » 03 Oct 2008, 23:55

Glad y'all enjoyed Camp Bestival, Big Chill and Bestival 'cos I worked (as did thousands of others) damn hard to ensure they went ahead as near to plan as was possible.

I did 9 festivals this year and although each of them were different in their own ways (don't have much time for Rob and his missus after their shenanigans this year and won't be supporting them next year as a result) I found some of the smaller ones to be more personal and far less edgy/trashy than the larger ones. At Bestival, I carried an unconscious teenaged, Ketamine overdoser to the medi-tent, a guy with a broken leg to an ambulance because it couldn't get to him and a woman with a serious nut allergy, who was already anaphylactic by the time I reached her, to the medi-tent which had been moved due to its revious location being flooded out. All totally avoidable!

I saw The Flaming Lips and played 'golf' with one of the band members outside the Cinema I was running in the Boutique camping area....I say golf because we were using a golf club to hit a yellow, squeaky rubber duck out into the crowd over the fence.

I saw a bit of Leonard Cohen from the top of a tree which I was placing a spotlight in - can't say what all the fuss was about as our massive tent in the Body and Soul area rocked big time.

If you want something more upclose and personal with less corporate nonsense, less drug abusing and zero theft, drop me a PM and i'll give you the lowdown.

2,000 people make far less of a mess of our otherwise beautiful countryside than 35,000 do. Such festivals will cost you less, will be safer for kids and for anything you own and will not totally trash a country park the way Bestival did Robin Hill Country Park. You probably have no idea of the environmental consequences such events have on the land and it's habitat. Thousands of metric tonnes of sludge running into a wantercourse starved it of oxygen and nutrients and killed everything in it!

On a brighter note, I donated four tents, one blow up mattress, a pair of steel toe-capped wellies, a couple of army issue ponchos, £50, a torch and loads of camping gear to my local Marie Curie shop. That was all I could be bothered to pick up of the hundreds of tents etc which had been left behind after Bestival. Careless idiots without a care for themselves or anyone else's property just because they though it was their right to behave like that. Buddhafield, Out of the Ordinary, 888 Gathering, Kimberley etc,etc are a totally different story and if it's cost that prevents you, i'll organise a couple of 2 hour shifts for you to do over the week which will be in lieu of your ticket. Next year, go to some real festivals!

Cheers,

HV

PS: I saw tractors towing tractors out of the mud when we were leaving Bestival in my T25. Ha!