Wickham Festival 2013
Reviewed by Johanna Walker
Our family of four, including a 5 year old and 21 month old, camped for the weekend at the Wickham Folk Festival, in Hampshire.
The festival has all the elements that we’ve come to expect from a much more well-known festival, just on a smaller scale. This makes it ideal for children. Our older child is an experienced festival-goer, but our younger one is a bit of a ‘bolter’, so we had initial visions of spending the weekend frantically chasing after her. However, the festival is so civilized and uncrowded, while still retaining a whole lot of atmosphere, that we didn’t even need to use the reins we’d brought with us as a last resort.
The lack of crowds meant almost no queues for (the very clean) Portaloos, the excellent food stalls and even the beer tent. With around 15 food stalls, there was a great choice of everything from fish and chips to Mexican via sausages and Thai. Vegan, gluten- and lactose-free diets were all catered to. Our children particularly loved the mobile pizza oven and we loved the delicious burritos.
There was plenty to entertain children, including Punch & Judy, a story teller, a mobile theatre and, of course, the music. In a smart move, films such as Madagascar 3 and Up were shown at the witching hour of 5 o’clock, so our children had time to wind down after taking part in Morris Dancing workshops, making clay figures and enjoying classic festival experiences like having their hair braided!
Having never been to a specifically folk festival before we weren’t sure what to expect from the music, but we saw some amazing bands. The Waterboys headlined Friday and played all kinds of Irish music as well as favourites like ‘The Whole of the Moon’ and ‘Fisherman’s Blues’. Bands we’d never heard of but fell in love with included French Canadians ‘Vent du Nord’, whose CD sold out, and Brendan Powers and Tim Edey, the current Radio 2 Folk Duo of the Year. We also sang along with two fantastic shanty groups. It was also nice to see some local bands play on the outdoor acoustic stage. The stage had some big competition from the adjacent second Big Top but the musicians and their loyal fans carried on regardless. One thing we hadn’t expected was that lots of festival-goers bring their camping chairs, put them up in the Big Top and then leave them there for the weekend. That can mean it’s a bit difficult to get in the Big Top if you arrive late.
Lastly, if this all sounds a bit tame, there were two fairground rides including the terrifying ‘reverse bungee’, which shot people into the air high above the arena.
When we arrived to camp we were shown to the overflow campsite, which meant we could park our car next to our tent, instead of having to unload it and carry everything to the campsite. The field was clean, quiet, had plenty of Portaloos and washing up facilities and, although we could hear the music from the Big Top, it wasn’t loud enough to keep us awake after a full and exhausting day! The Wickham Farm Shop, in whose field the main campsite is located, has had a huge revamp and now sells all kinds of produce as well as having a fantastic cafe.
Wickham bills itself as ‘the safest and most family-friendly festival’ and it succeeds almost completely in this. However, because of its size it doesn’t really have proper systems for dealing with lost children in place, and when a child went missing on the Friday there was no clear place for the child to be returned to or for the parents to report the incident. Happily she was located quickly but I would have felt happier if there had been a staffed ‘lost child’ point. Two other minor comments would be even with a programme it is not always clear what’s on when, especially when it comes to some of the children’s activities. Lastly, I always enjoy a good potter round the stalls at a festival and although there were plenty, there wasn’t much variety.
At £80 for an advance ticket, including camping, Wickham is excellent value for money, a happy festival and a great introduction to your next favourite band.
Rating: 4.5/5
For more information or to book tickets for Wickham Festival 2014 (and get an earlybird discount) visit www.wickhamfestival.co.uk
