One Fest

Brrrr. It was a cold one but I'm back having survived a freezing cold night in a tent camping at the Barge Inn, Honeystreet, Wiltshire.

How small is that tent?!

The reason for this craziness was the official first music festival of the year, One Fest. Yes! That means summer is just around the corner. There was no sign of it anywhere yesterday with parka coats, boots and woolly hats as the sensible festival wear of choice.

One Fest is a small gathering in a field near Marlborough so if you want to sink a few ciders travel arrangements are best planned in advance. We had booked ourselves on a coach from the Barge Inn to the festival site for £10 return, and following an initial panic that they hadn't booked us in we were off. Upon arrival the site did look very small with everything in one enclosed space. As well as the main stage there was the BBC Intoducing... Tent, Bar Tent - very important, coffee vans, a few food outlets and some stalls. It was a safe environment for children with limited opportunities to get lost but I was glad I had made this an adult only trip as there wasn't much there to keep them occupied.

To warm up, and stop my belly from grumbling, we headed to a food tent, The Hungry Elephant(?), for my first ever cup of Chai - amazing stuff - and a plate of Chilli Bean Nachos.

Festi-food

Festi-friends

Festi-food tent!

The music was shared between two stages and after checking out the main stage we went to warm up in the BBC Introducing... Tent. These sorts of festivals are great to check out upcoming bands and singers, and to hear new material from more established artists. I really enjoyed these artists:

 Young Blood

 Gaz Brookfield

Michele Stodart - from the Magic Numbers

Clearly another thing to enjoy at festivals is the cider.

 A refreshing pint of Bounders.

And my favourite Kopparberg.

It didn't seem too long until it was time for another festival must have....

 ...waiting for it....

...PIE!!

Looks like I need it to soak up that earlier cider.

As the evening drew on it got colder and colder so we watched Michele Stodart in the BBC tent then headed out to check out Damon Albarn's latest musical production Dr Dee. This was an interesting one. I love Blur and The Gorillaz and think Damon Albarn is a great singer but this was something very different. Dr Dee is a classical / operatic / modern infusion which would have been great on a warm Summer's afternoon but as a headliner on a cold April night it didn't quite work for me.

We chilled some more in the Hungry Elephant tent then as a fantastic end to the night went for a Hoedown in the music tent. This warmed us up perfectly for the coach ride back to the coldest night I have ever spent in a tent!

I'm going to leave you with some lovely festi-pics.

I'm now making plans for my next festival.

How about you?

x x x