The award-winning Camp Bestival, situated at Lulworth Castle on Dorset’s Jurassic coastline, is probably the largest family-friendly festival in the UK with a capacity of around 30, 000. We’ve written about it here and this year we were lucky enough to attend. Having been to various festivals over the years, this was the first time we had been to one as a family with young children (five and six years old).
Two adult tickets at a cost of £197.50 each, the two children’s tickets at £45 each and an upgrade to Camping Plus at an extra cost of £150 brought the total bill to £635. Camping Plus is the camping equivalent of booking your seats at the theatre. You get to choose your plot (a generous 5 metre by 7 metres) and the Camping Plus area has its own dedicated car park, food stalls, toilets and showers. The other ‘plus’ is that people staying outside Camping Plus cannot come into the area so it has that extra level of security and exclusivity.
Being in our forties and not quite as supple and active as in our younger days, we purchased a six person inflatable tent and a range-topping but expensive inflatable double bed to get us through the weekend without compromising on comfort. We’ll have more on that in a separate article. So, with our Zafira stuffed to the max carrying four people and camping gear and provisions to survive three days, we ventured East to Dorset.
Now, a wise old lady once told me to give feedback in a positive-negative-positive ‘sandwich’. I’m going to ignore that advice and get the negatives out of the way as I want to concentrate on what was good about Camp Bestival 2019..and there was a lot of good. There’s some first-timer tips at the end of this review too, or at least observations that may help first-time family festival goers!
The negatives
Getting to Camp Bestival from Cornwall was easy enough and well signposted as you got nearer the venue.
Parking was stress-free as there were stewards to guide us in and, once we had climbed the short hill from the car park to the Camping Plus plots, we arrived at an airport terminal style security entrance. After checking that we didn’t have any prohibited items we were let through. At the time this gave me peace of mind knowing that the Camping Plus area was not accessible to others from the rest of the campsite. I assumed the wristband we had been given would be used as a security check later on, but more on that later.
On arrival at out pitch we quickly realised that someone else was occupying it. Back we trotted to the security entrance to talk to a member of staff. Understandably, they could only offer us a nearby choice of pitches, which luckily had not been sold out. I’m not sure if anyone had a word with our pitch pinchers but we quickly forgot about it as we engrossed ourselves in the festival experience.
Aside from this early annoyance, the only other disappointment was the fact that thereafter, there appeared to be no security checks on accessing the Camping Plus area from the rest of the festival. This meant that, in reality, anyone could use its upgraded facilities which made it feel a bit less exclusive.
Now, with that out of the way…
Luckily these minor negatives were outweighed by the overwhelmingly positive experience of Camping Plus. I was impressed at the spacing between the pitches and the thoroughfares, it didn’t look like those pictures you see of Glastonbury where the tents are crammed together. It was rather orderly and, dare I say, quite civilised.
Its toilets, of which there were the bog standard (excuse the pun) green portaloos and posher ceramic toilet blocks, were well maintained and cleaned every two or three hours. The same goes for the showers. A couple of types were available, most notably Posh Wash Showers which were cleaned every couple of hours and came complete with instant hot water and a ceramic sink. They were by far the best I’ve experienced at a festival before.
Next to each of the shower/toilet areas were water points and also dish washing points which became hubs of activity around typical mealtimes.
There were a couple of food stalls available in Camping Plus. Serving hot and cold beverages and mainly light bite/breakfast related food, they were especially useful for those times when (sometimes hungover) not wanting a DIY breakfast!
The lighting at night in the Camping Plus area was great, we easily found our tent and it always felt safe enough for our kids to run on ahead.
Food
Each field/area at Camp Bestival had a comprehensive food offering from the various food stalls available. We encountered: Venezuelan, Malaysian, Thai, hot dogs, fish and chips and wood fired pizza to name a few. Our main port of call for evening dining was the Feast Collective, a tented food hall of worldly tasty delights! Food was generally in the £7 – £12 for a serving of something.
Toilets
Yes, toilets. The very thing we had been dreading, especially with young children, was a lot better than we expected. If you avoided the queues at peak times, or spent a little time hunting, you would easily find a decent toilet in the main festival area. At the other extreme, the Seat Of Luxury toilets, costing £3 a trip, were basically typical portaloo toilets guaranteed to be clean within an inch of their lives, being staffed by dedicated attendants. Hair straighteners, tampons and sweets were on offer for free after you’d done your business. We didn’t have to make use of these particular toilets too much during our stay. However, they were a lifesaver on the final night when we found our routes blocked, for health and safety reasons, by the closure of lanes because of the firework display. For that reason we can verify that they are the best you can get in terms of festival toiletry and worth every penny!
Events
We found enough to easily occupy both children and adults. During the day we spent much of the time taking the kids to various events and stalls, from Mr Tumble and Mr Maker through to Jurassic Rangers, the Insect Circus and the Cardboard Castle.
A lot of experiences were free but invariably invoked a queue and others had a cost attached but were typically well worth it.
The kids loved ‘The World’s Biggest Bouncy Castle’ (I can believe it, it was huge!) and the storytelling events in The Greatest Tent on Earth.
Music was excellent. The stand out moments for me were the Human League, Nile Rodgers and Chic, Morcheeba and Annie Mac. It was great that you could be watching such performers surrounded by like-minded parents with kids in tow, either asleep in the pull along wagons (cute!) or tired but mesmerised by their first live festival gig. That said, my fondest memories of Camp Bestival are of the evenings as you don’t often get to experience open-air gigs like this with children, it is quite a unique experience.
Quirky
Festivals often exhibit things we don’t normally see and Camp Bestival was full of it!
Caravanserai was one of those beautifully quirky places that you only find at festivals, made up of welded together French caravans, it was like stumbling upon some gypsy encampment made up of creative geniuses. Amazing.
Seeing Vic Reeves do a dj set was quite bizarre having grown up with him doing comedy on the telly. Sorry, no picture!
At one with nature and Zen
The Wild Tribe, Dingly Dell and Slow Motion were great areas to connect with nature as well as yourself.
Finale and fireworks
The final night’s finale was a spectacular feat of sound and visuals, following a storming set by Annie Mac. One of the best fireworks displays we’ve ever seen made even more special with the synchronised music and castle projections.
So much to see, so little time…
Even with three days to experience Camp Bestival, it was impossible to fit it all in and we did miss an awful lot that we had pencilled in to see. However, we would have missed the point if we had stuck to a strict timetable and stressed out trying to see everything, especially with young kids!
Camp Bestival tips (that also apply to other festivals too!)
As promised, some observations that may help others.
Frank water
Camp Bestival typically takes place in the hotter part of the Summer and 2019 was no exception. One particular service I liked was Frank Water where you purchase one of their refillable water bottles or a FRANK Water wristband which entitled you to unlimited refills of filtered, chilled water. What is even better is that all proceeds from sales go to their charity. You can read more about it here: https://www.frankwater.com/festival-refill
Toilet and shower queues
Being in the orange area in row A of Camping Plus, we were very near the toilet and shower areas so we were able to observe queue behaviour and various cleaning times.
It was obvious that morning times were busiest with long queues for both the showers and toilets. As should be every festival goer’s mantra, ‘go with the flow’ and think outside your normal routine. I simply showered in the afternoon to avoid the queues and typically after they had had a periodic cleaning. The same for toilets, I would attempt to ‘number two’ at non-queuing times but I appreciate not everyone (including my children!) could do this.
One interesting phenomena I observed was that you would get huge queues for a particular shower block but there were showers available in the block next to it..for no good reason I could fathom other than herd mentality! So, always check what else is available nearby/right next to where others are queuing.
The same goes for toilets. Granted, even the posher toilets got dirty like any festival toilet will, but do check that poor green portaloo you assume is going to be dirty and that no-one os queing at may just be sparkly clean.
Expensive
Festivals can be expensive above and beyond the ticket price. At the end of the day these are business ventures and looking to capitalise on a captive audience. It is easy to let the budget spiral with the lovely food available but at (typically) a £8-£10 per dish and £5 / £6 per pint, it can soon rack up. For us we tried to maintain a happy medium of camping breakfast and alternating lunch/dinner between the festival fare and what we had brought along. We also had a fair amount of canned beer (no glass allowed) which saved money
Dirty festival toilets
Camp Bestival’s toilets are the best I’ve seen at any festival to be fair although we did (and you will) find ones that you would not attempt to sit down at. Most of the ones I could ‘work with’ had either just been cleaned or had a splash of wee on the lid. A quick wipe with a wet wipe or, as I had come prepared, a small spray bottle of detergent and a wipe with some tissue paper was enough to make it acceptable to my standards! This really was my main concern that ended up being a non-problem although I suspect that you won’t see better ones than these at a festival.
Turn on, tune in, drop out
Well sort of. For us, although it was tempting to work to a rigid timetable to fit everything in, in reality that was never going to work. Instead we ended up screwing the routine and went with the flow. Meal times were erratic, the kids went to bed at 11.30pm on some nights and breakfast was sometimes at 7am or 10am. We might be having a pint at 11am or a coffee and a pizza at 11pm, but even though this might sound horrific to routine and orderly based parents, this is perfectly OK! I think this is the best way to ‘be’ at a festival otherwise you’ll run yourself ragged trying to do everything.
Bestival
Address: East Lulworth, Wareham BH20 5QQ
http://www.bestival.net/