Sharon’s festy blog: Beautiful Days

Beautiful Days main stage

This is just a mini-report from one of the biggest underground family-friendly festivals there is. Underground, because, despite selling out its 20,000 or so tickets each year, this festival has no corporate sponsorship and still feels like a bit of a secret for those in the know.

It’s somehow also the festival that feels most like home to me. Probably because, like the majority of BDs fans, I’m an old punk at heart. I love Glasto and Bestival and lots of others, but Beautiful Days is the festival where I’m most likely to bump into an old friend from my mad squatting days - and we’ll both be pushing buggies.

This year, organisers The Levellers are celebrating their 20 year anniversary, and seven years of their own festival, held in a picturesque corner of Devon. We’ve been at three previous BDs, but 2007′s washed out mudfest put us off returning last year. We’d timed our Devon holiday to end up at the festival this time around, but a combination of another washout two days before that left our awning in tatters, our clothes already muddied and our spirit bruised, meant we only intended to pitch up for the day and head home after Friday headliners Hawkwind. Needless to say that didn’t happen.

Footpath to the campsite

We arrived on site at lunchtime, and found the camper van field to be buzzing with all manner of live-in vehicles, from the archetypal hippy buses, to hire vans with mattresses in the back, and hundreds of VWs – total eye candy for a Dubber like me.

Our fortnight on the road had left our van laden with stuff and little room to swing a sleeping bag without the awning, so when we realised that we’d been caught up in the Beautiful Days vibe and simply had to stay the night, we did some hasty rearranging to enable us all to sleep in the van in reasonable comfort (okay, perhaps not comfort exactly, but at least we were warm and dry).

Firstly we headed down to the Big Top to catch festival opening act Drunk In Public, who are of course The Levellers, acoustic-style. It seems the entire festival had had the same idea and the tent was rammed to the gills. At this point there was a light but steady drizzle falling, so we grabbed a spot undercover just outside the tent and were able to listen to the band while feeding the baby and enjoying our first pints of Beautiful Daze, the festival’s signature ale. Beautiful Days’ beer is worth mentioning – the beer tents are run by Otter Brewery and they serve up a fine range of real ales and ciders as well as the usual lagers, wines and spirits and the prices are very good for a festival (from £2.60 a pint).

As the day wore on the weather improved and by evening we were enjoying a properly beautiful day. We set up the shelter tent at the rear of the main arena in anticipation of Hawkwind, who had promised a video and laser spectacular to celebrate their 40th anniversary. We didn’t block anyone’s view, and no one blocked us, in fact at the back of the arena is a great place to view the mainstageacts as most of the other groups also had children with them, and everyone’s kids played together with their lightsticks and flashing wands.

We caught a great London band that I’d never heard of before called The King Blues - a sort of political punk/ska crossover who reminded me of the old Blaggers ITA at their finest. They were in the middle of a song about peace and love when the singer stopped the music to berate the security for being too heavy with an overenthusiastic fan down the front. Six year old Vincent loved their music – he even forgave their excessive sweariness, which is almost unheard of for him!

Louis wishes he could get some of Vincent's pasta

We used the shelter as a base for the entire evening – I get overyone’s dinners in relay and brought it back to the family. Pie, mash and mushy peas for Jon, kiddie pasta for V and an enchilada for me - all excellent fresh food and at unthreatening prices. We even splashed out on a programme (£5) and a couple of festival tee shirts (£8 for kid sizes and £16 adult) because they are cool and not too expensive.

Jon groaned when crusty favourites Dreadzone started, but I found it impossible not to warm to their dancey grooves when the atmosphere was so happy and friendly. The fine evening turned clear and chilly before Hawkwind appeared, we’d brought warm clothes and blankets but even so, we really felt the nip by then.

Hawkwind didn’t disappoint. The band themselves are not much to look at, but when their chug-chug-squee-bleep space rock is complemented by silver robot dancing girls, sharp green lasers and a rolling cosmic video projection, it adds up to a memorable festival experience. We didn’t get Spirit of the Age, but we were treated to Silver Machine, loads of other stuff that I am not a big enough fan to know the names of, and an encore of Hashish - pretty appropriate, given the sweet smokey smells and blank smiling faces shambling around us.

The party carried on well into the night, but we had two sleeping boys by then and I wasn’t far off, so we headed back up the hill to the van field (not as bad in the dry as I remember it in the mud) and caught up with our sleep.

Macbeth? Some trees on a walk through the kids' field

Of course we’d intended to travel home first thing in the morning, but that didn’t happen either. Saturday dawned fair and bright, and we diecidedto spend some time in the kids’ field before we went home. It was great – we just parked ourselves down and the entertainment pretty much came to us. We were right next to a climbing frame festooned with ropes and netting, and Vincent used up some excess energy swinging about on it. There were loads of roving entertainers – we were visited by the Poetry Lady, who would recite a rhyme to anyone who stopped her. There was an amazing motorised pirate ship which literally weighed anchor right in front of us, while its cheerful crew got everyone around to dance a hornpipe for a free badge. Most surreal was the Narnia-style faun who danced around on spring heels followed by a wizard and a witchy looking woman armed with a water spray. Their antics and games kept the children running around and joining in for hours.

All around the edges of the kids area were the workshops, where you could join in craft and art activities, such as wicker weaving or circus skills. Some little girls emerged from one tent proudly wearing their creations – wicker fairy wings, I kid you not. Everyone seemed to have made their own poi sets and were practising on any spare patch of ground. There was a teenage area which seemed to be pumping out loud music most of the time but I didn’t dare venture in to have a look.

The highlight of Vincent’s afternoon was when I gave him a pound for the crockery smash stall – run by a local recycling group. He was given three billiard balls and invited to throw them as hard as he liked at the carefully arranged plates and pots. Amazingly, he smashed about 30 pieces with his first shot, including sending a stuffed rabbit flying. This was proclaimed the ‘shotof the day’ by the organisers and an elated Vincent was given the bunny to keep.

Sadly, we couldn’t put it off any longer – we had to get home. So no Pogues for us on Saturday and no flower power dressing up for the theme on Sunday. We were gutted to leave so early but we’re going to time it all a bit better next year – and we’ll definitely be back!