The Big Feastival - A review
Take what you know of festivals, all the mud, the rubbish, the drunk behaviour, and forget it.
If that’s what you’re after you should have headed to Reading last weekend.
We’re talking The Big Feastival here. The festival held at Alex James’s farm. You know Alex James. He’s from Blur. It’s also organised by Jamie Oliver. You know him. The one from everywhere.
In essence this is a family food and music festival. With all three given equal billing.
Let’s start with the food and drink.
Top of ¬†my list would be Westons Cider - which was glorious when the sun was out and even went down very well when the sun was hiding behind those pesky clouds. I love Westons. It’s a glorious taste of the West Country and the fact that they had their own tent at feastival was fantastic as I ended up making it my second home.
In the spirit of diversity I obviously tried some of the other bars like Birra Moretti, Doombar, the Gin Bar and the Champagne Bar as well as the various wine producers that were on offer. That’s only the stuff we tried.
In fact it’s a surprise that I remember much of the festival at all.
Now onto the food and this is where it gets exciting.
Let’s just say there were three different craft popcorn producers. That’s three. Before this festival I didn’t even know there was such a thing as craft popcorn. You learn something new every day.
We had Gaucho steak - a must for anyone who likes good Argentinian steak.
To be honest there was so much food on offer that I’m surprised that I didn’t put on a couple of stone by the time I left the festival. Beef brisket and pulled. Sausages galore. Paella. It was food heaven and everything was organically or locally sourced from the region.
There were various stalls selling cheese, coffee, sausages, oils, cereals, organic cosmetics, juices, bread, water, chocolate, cakes, sauces, marinades, preserves, ice creams, Organic allsorts, and artisan crisps. If you can think of it, there will be a stall selling it.
There was also a billion things that you could do. Just exploring the festival site was a pleasure. There was wine tasting, cookery lessons and arts and craft workshops.
To be honest you couldn’t move for food. There were several stages just for cooking and banquets. It was definitely a food and music festival and not the other way around.
For the kids it was fantastic. There was a complete fairground with the oldest ferris wheel in the UK apparently as well as The Gruffalo and various other acts wondering around, as well as all sorts of centres, tents and areas to keep them amused. Games were a big thing with the roars coming from the table tennis being especially raucous.
But let’s not forget the music. It was a great line-up from¬†the main acts to the bearded ladies on Folk¬†Idol on The Udder Stage who performed a rendition of “Walk on By”.
There was three stages. The Main Stage, The Udder Stage and The Bandstand.
My particular favourites were Norman Jaye, who was awesome and the divine Rae Morris but I also caught Badly Drawn Boy, Dizzee Rascal, Groove Armada on the main stage as well as The Lottery Winners and Duke on the Udder Stage.
One mention for the Bandstand, next to the Doombar tent.¬†We were having an ale - Doombar launched their new beer Wolf Rock - and we¬†overheard this band “The Pylons” - who were 16 to 17 year old kids¬†- playing to a few¬†bystanders. Gradually people started to congregate, I was pretty damn impressed and I¬†heard people commenting in agreement - a bit of rocky/indie¬†type stuff. They are from Lincoln and have¬†performed at the Royal Albert¬†Hall I think as part of the School Proms.¬†I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we hear of them in the future again.¬†They looked really young but they seemed to have a certain something.
The general vibe of the festival was good, but be warned as this was very much an upmarket festival. Very middle-class with lots of pink wellies - clearly the home of glamping. Not the Glastonbury or Reading edgy type thing. It was also very family orientated with lots and lots and lots of kids.
Here’s a few things I noticed -
1. I didn’t see anyone smoking nor did I see any cigarette butts.
2. People were incredibly well behaved, not a drunkard in sight (apart from me) not a fight, not a scuffle.
3. Security was visible, but understated.
4. Generally very clean, even the loos were cleaner than your usual festival fare.
5.  Slightly less good was the fact that the cash machines broke down by Saturday evening and on Sunday the queues were more than half an hour long for the surviving machine which had a £2.95 charge!
Other than the cash machines it seemed an incredibly well run festival and with the train station only four minutes walk away it’s pretty damn easy to get to.
I don’t think you could have asked for a better weekend in a field in Oxfordshire.
Overall experience 4.5 out of 5
