All the Campness of Bestival

Each year brings a number of new, family friendly festivals and in 2008, Sunday Best launched Camp Bestival, a family friendly spin-off of their main Bestival event.  That first Camp Bestival, despite being marred by organisational problems, showed that a proper festival aimed music loving parents and fun loving kids was not just possible but very welcome.

Last year, Camp Bestival ironed out the issues with the camping fields that marked 2008 only to be beset by a new problem….overcrowding on site.  The kids’ field hosted Nicklodeon’s Spongebob Squarepants tent and for most of the weekend, the entire field was so popular that it was as rammed as the District Line at rush hour.

Moving on to 2010, Camp Bestival has now got everything right.  The camping fields were big enough to fit everyone in, bearing in mind that families pitch much bigger tents than singles or couples, and the additional fields open behind the courtyard meant that while there was less room for production cabins and tour buses, there was loads more space for festival goers and their families to enjoy.

The extra space meant that there was also room for more stalls, a new bandstand stage and Zippo’s Circus, all of which were welcome additions.  Crucially, it also allowed families to spread out more.  Last year’s kids field was too overcrowded to let toddlers scamper about in, the very thing that most 1 or 2 year olds want to do after hours of travelling to the site, but this year, there was no shortage of happy kids stretching their legs as parents enjoyed picnics in the sunshine.

Of course, Camp Bestival isn’t all for kids – the parents were amply catered for too with great bars, plenty of excellent stand up comedy and the sort of festival line up of new and old bands that has become the hallmark of Sunday Best.  For every Tinie Tempah there was a Human League.  Veterans such as The Fall and Marc Almond were balanced by relative newcomers like Friendly Fires.

Most of the people who object to kids at festivals will point out that high volume levels are not good for kids hearing, but the Camp Bestival sound levels were fine.  Many parents put Peltor headphones on their kids presumably because the kids didn’t want to hear hits from their parents’ youth rather than for fear of tinnitus.

While taking kids to a festival is great fun for both generations, the long journey, late nights and varied routines brought by camping can easily make busy parents over stressed and frazzled, so the appearance of Boutique Babysitting on site was greeted with delight by many, especially those who, having played with their kids non stop since breakfast time, were in need of a child-free break by night time.  Cynics might wonder why anyone would go to the trouble of taking their kids to Camp Bestival then drop them into a babysitting service, but that would be to miss the point – Camp Bestival is not a kids festival, it’s a family festival, and at times, both kids and parents welcome a break from each other, especially when its time for parents to pack up the tent or if parents want to keep enjoying the festivities but the kids are sleepy.  Boutique Babysitting plus Camp Bestival makes for an excellent combination.

The barometer of how good Camp Bestival 2010 was has to be the mood of the crowds, not just the experience of the Family Festivals reviewers, and this year, there was wave after wave of happy parents and ecstatic kids pouring into the site.  Even the festival security contractors were smiling this year where previously they’ve been more interested in scowling and trying to confiscate baby food (as happened to us in 2009). 

After a couple of formative years, Camp Bestival has now hit its stride and does what it was set up to do….and does it very, very well.  Other festival promoters will no doubt be watching and taking note, and similar events will almost certainly start to pop up around the country, but none could ever replicate the cheeky charm and special atmosphere that Camp Bestival itself possesses.

• Early bird tickets for Camp Bestival’s 2011 event will go on sale on Friday 6 August.