Thursday 2 August 2012

Camp Bestival 2012

I think I am just about recovered enough for a little write up of the weekend's events!

Lower Kids Garden
So, we packed Friend's car up on Wednesday evening, and headed off after breakfast on Thursday morning. We intentionally left 5 hours earlier than last year, when we ended up stuck in queues for absolutely ages and then had the trauma of trolley hire, finding a spare bit of land (on a slope), and setting up camp with empty stomaches because it was getting dark and we were fairly stressed and just wanted it done. This year was an absolute dream in comparrison! We had our own trolley, too, which was a lifesaver. Taking a trolley from home rather than hiring or lugging your stuff to and fro is an absolute must. If anyone is going to get ONE bit of advice from my witterings, this would be it. Leave a child at home if you have to, just get one and cram it into your car!

The flag of Gloucestershire. Who knew?!
Even though it was only around 1pm when we arrived on site it was still getting pretty busy. We had a bit of a walk to our eventual plot, but this had the added bonus of being very close to the festival site. Set up was very relaxed - put tents up, have picnic lunch, get another load, potter about a bit, get final load, have picnic tea and relax with wine. Perfect :)

A view from our tent on the Friday. It didn't get much busier than this but mainly because the big green patches you can see are actually steep slopes! You can just make our our local loos bnehind the gazebo thingy. Near enough to be handy, not so near that we could small them.. and believe me, by Monday they were VERY smelly!

The three day festival included:

My younger daughter seeming to put the big girls under the cruciatus curse in the Bollywood tent
A kids choir session - 'Dancing in September' by Earth, Wind & Fire became the song of the festival for us. Or at least the chorus did, on repeat, for 3 days solid. 
Sending postcards home

Cheesy chips (£3.60)
Matt Horne in the East Lulworth Literary Tent. He said that if he had to put money on it, he'd say there'll be a Gavin & Stacey Christmas special in 2013. HOORAY! We also saw Daniel Roche (Ben from Outnumbered) here but I couldn't actually see him to take a decent photo!
Finger knitting in the knitting tent - £1 for a ball of wool and a teacher! The girls are hooked
Hummingbird Bakery cakes! Mmmmmm
Wagamama Lounge. A HUGE hit, not least because they chose the photo of our lovely girls eating their noodles as the cover photo for the Camp Bestival photo album on their Facebook *proud mummy*
eating a mealworm, if you are Lucy, after Stefan Gates' show. Which was brilliant.
DIY face painting 

The Wall of Death. A bit loud for one of the Fairy Princess Ninja Bunnies Of Death, but other than that she seemed remarkably calm about motorbikes and go carts whizzing around the wall just inches from her face. I wish I could say I was as unphased as the kids were!!
Pimms, and Rolf Harris, and finger knitting in the sunshine. A perfect Sunday afternoon.

An English National Ballet workshop
Kids cupcake decorating
Amazing fireworks on the last night. A lot of people leave on Sunday afternoon/evening which I think is a shame because the Camp Bestival crew clearly put SO much effort into the firework and light projection effort, and after all, you've paid for it! But from the point of view of us having to pack up and leave the site on the Monday, I won't complain :)
 This was our second Camp Bestival and hopefully not our last! Although it will take a while to fully recover from the post-festival exhaustion of this one I think ;)

Credit goes to Madame Guillotine, as without her review of Camp Bestival 2010 we would never have gone!

And finally, here is the official link to the Camp Bestival fireworks.. amazing!



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