Camp Bestival

 We have just returned from Camp Bestival where we had a marvellous time. Early in the year hubbie and I were discussing (as we do every year but never sort it out) that it would be great if we could go to a music festival preferably without the kids. We were looking at the Giles Peterson Worldwide Festival on a beach in the South of France (I know it looked amazing). After I got very excited especially as it was so cheap I then couldn’t find flights that would fit in with our childcare. I then looked up Camp Bestival which looked good as it was family friendly so wouldn’t be full of drunk 19 year olds (just middle aged drunk parents). Got our 4 man tent sorted, dropped off kids for a split weekend with grandparents and drove down to Dorset on Friday morning. When we turned up, we walked around all the fields trying to find a small patch of grass to pitch our tent, we started noticing that everyone had children with them, we were a minority being without our kids. After walking around the festival we figured out why, basically the whole festival is designed for families with 2 areas just for children (arts / crafts, circus skills, dressing up, discos and the list goes on). We had 2 options, get annoyed with ourselves for leaving the kids behind or embrace the freedom. Guess which option we took, so we sat in the fields (sometimes danced) and drank red wine / cider / cocktails and we ate loads of different exotic food. The only issue was that as I'm slightly ditzy (wow really I hear you say!) so acres and acres of tents I could never find ours fortunately I didn't try and get into some strangers tent. My highlights were: 

Blondie

• Labyrinth – Getting down with the teenagers by jumping up and down to this talented singer who was brilliant.
• Blondie – Debbie Harry although was a bit un-energetic at first (I think she’s 62) got rocking and I loved hearing all their old songs with lots of thirty something parents rocking along and was a really great atmosphere.
• Newton Faulkner – This dreadlocked white guy could really get the crowd going, he did a couple of covers including teardrop by Massive Attack and was so amazing on the guitar.
• Ed Sheeran – He’s only 18 but has bundles of confidence. For his late afternoon performance the big top was packed out and the surrounding field, very popular performer and he was great as well. Really talented singer / songwriter and all the 15 year old girls loved him, there must be something about him that gets the young girls going. See his cool new video that is using sign language for the lyrics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXvzzTICvJs&feature=relmfu

I would really recommend Camp Bestival, it was really well organised and a lot of thought had gone into the line-up and the timings to cater for the audience. I loved it but next year we are taking the kids.