- Festival Reviews
Last festival of the summer – the End Of The Road. A relatively small festival (boutique, I guess) with four music stages, on a very pretty site – Larmer Tree Gardens. The stages are perfectly placed; you can see and hear well from anywhere; peacocks roam about; the crowd are so well behaved you forget you are at a festival. The food looks great but comes at a price, and there is a huge assortment of drinks available, which even included normal beer this year.
- Festival Reviews
Well here we are, back in Wiltshire for the End of the Road festival. Having only missed the first edition of this festival it’s been interesting to watch it grow from it’s small beginnings to the heights of the Flaming Lips, Sigur ros years to seeing the festival return to a very solid indie and songwriter base, with some alt-rock and psych thrown in for good measure.
- Festival Reviews
Folk by the Oak is set in the glorious grounds of Hatfield House in Hertfordshire in the grandly titled Queen Elizabeth Oak Field named as allegedly it was whilst sitting under an oak tree in this field that Elizabeth I learnt of her accession to the throne. There are two music stages, a Main Stage and the rather wittily named Acorn Stage (smaller stage, newer bands), along with the usual food and drink outlets and an unusual dance area (think maypoles rather than glowsticks) and a wood turning stall. The whole event obviously has an emphasis on music from a folkie/ World music background.
- Festival Reviews
Well the Black Mountains of Wales provided us with a completely dry festival this year with some amazing music, food and err .. beer. This was a weekend to remember.
Thursday with base camp established was a sunny afternoon with plenty of activities going on around the site. The festival has a brilliant family feel and the smiles were broad on most of the faces around the site.
- Festival Reviews
Back from the ever wonderful Cambridge Folk Festival. It was my 13th time there and Cambridge remains my favourite festival. A lovely site, a nice size festival, super friendly atmosphere, draught Guinness, clean toilets and best of all – the music.
To my knowledge this is the first ever entirely dry CFF I have been at, and not only was it dry but there was a heatwave on. I did not mind this at all, though it did get incredibly hot at Stage One in the evenings. Tap water was readily available at various points around the site.
- Festival Reviews
The long established Cambridge Folk festival changed its weekend to a week later this year, throwing many regulars that we know out of the equation for attending. The event must have been close to sold out though judging by the size of the crowds over this sunny and extremely hot weekend.
- Festival Reviews
Last weekend’s Womad Festival offered a huge variety of music and an equally diverse range of weather: First two days of heatwave, which meant it was too hot to be in a tent after 8 a.m. Then an in-between-day with clouds and some showers and finally gale force winds and heavy rain that came at tents horizontally. I consider myself quite an experienced festival camper yet I have never had my tent flooded before. Apparently the ground was so dry that the rain could not sink in. My stuff wasn’t half as muddy as it sometimes gets, but definitely much wetter.
- Festival Reviews
Lime Wood is the flagship hotel in a chain of ‘Pig’ boutique hotels across Hampshire and the south west. Strong supporters of live music, they put on a series of daylong festivals during the summer under the Smoked & Uncut banner.
- Festival Reviews
Having spent the weekend in Victoria Park in East London with all the pollen and 'wacky backy’ smells it could throw at us, we are still marvelling at the quality of bands on hand over the Saturday and Sunday.
- Festival Reviews
Beat The Streets is an all day festival devised to raise funds for Framework, a Nottingham charity dedicated to bettering the lives of homeless people. Over 80 acts from the East Midlands came together on 10 stages in Nottingham for this worthy cause.
- Festival Reviews
The Temple Bar TradFest is in its 13th year. Always on at the same time as Celtic Connections, the Dublin fest is similar, but smaller. One of the assets of the festival are its unconventional venues: Churches, the Town Hall, Dublin Castle, the House of Lords. These places do not have bars, so audiences listen well.
- Festival Reviews
My first time at the End Of The Road festival in Wiltshire. Friends had been recommending this festival for some years. The line up never had too many must-sees for me, so I decided to go as a volunteer. I could work for my ticket and would not be too upset if I missed any of the acts. This worked out really well; Wicked Events are a very well-organised and fair organisation to work for.