Lake District and Beatherder

Lake District and Beatherder

This is Bob writing this one again:  

   Whilst planning our trip around the U.K we were on the lookout for festivals we could sneak in along our route. Our plan was always to head up to Scotland straight after Glastonbury and then work our way back down the west coast and Wales on our way back down to Dover to cross over the channel. It just so happened that beatherder festival fell 3 weeks after Glastonbury and 2 weeks before we were planning to cross into France and was also conveniently located in the north west of England, just east of the top of Wales. Plus I had never attended Beatherder but knew a lot of people who had who all gave it a very good review, a number of whom even going as far as claiming it to be their favourite festival. This is quite a claim in a green and pleasant land with more music festivals of all shapes and sizes than you could shake a stick at, so naturally it needed checking out.

       However before we even made it to beatherder it was decided we should quickly tour the Lake District on the way down from Scotland. The Lake District, in the far North West corner of England, is the largest national park in England whilst also containing its 5 highest mountains, its longest and deepest lakes, has its highest annual rainfall and snowfall and also some of its highest winds. So it’s fair to say it is England at its most scenic and wild. (Wild by comparison of England’s manicured, tamed and heavily regulated  patchwork blanket of farmland, hedgerows and cities; Not to be confused with the actual, genuine, kill-you-in-an-instant-if-you’re-not-careful wild of Australia’s raw and brutal landscape.)   

     After being extraordinarily surprised at how beautiful Scotland was on our 2 week trip around it I was hoping for big things from our largest national park. And I think if I hadn’t just spent the last two weeks in Scotland I would have been mightily impressed by the lake districts long and plentiful lakes nestled between rugged mountains. But unfortunately I had just spent the last two weeks in Scotland. So the Lakes district just felt like a smaller, more regulated, less extreme version of Scotland. A version of Scotland that the average family on holiday from their suburban home in one of the many midland cities could enjoy without being too overwhelmed or having to travel too far with a car full of screaming kids. Not that I want to discourage anybody from going to the Lake District of course, it is a very beautiful place and well worth the visit, and also noticeably more wild than anything you will come across elsewhere in England.

      As with most of the rest of our trip so far the weather was so unpredictable it almost became predictable. The general routine seemed to have a single day of solid rain, start to finish, only starting the next morning with clear skies and sunshine. Followed the next day by torrential rain that seemed to materialize overnight with no kind of warning. Also it must be noted that rain in England is an entirely different animal from rain in Australia. In Australia it can be roasting hot and sunny in the morning, suddenly the skies will darken and it will pour with torrential rain for all of 15 minutes, only to brighten up again just in time to fire up the barbies before dinner. In England it is quite rare to see heavy rain, it generally comes in the form of a relentless, persistent drizzle that appears to go on for days at a time, which at first seems like it shouldn’t even get you wet but within 10 minutes can soak you through to the bone, accompanied by some of the most thick and oppressively overcast skies; horizon to horizon in a blanket of grim and dreary clouds that feel like they are so low down you could just reach up and pull them out the sky. It’s like they built all of our cities out of concrete just to complement it. And don’t forget this is the middle of summer we are talking about here.  You can’t beat a good spot of British Summer Time. 

   So due to this all too British trait of shit weather, a fair number of our photos were taken during some highly overcast and miserable skies:

Near Buttermere:

The town of Keswick:

Castlerigg stone circle, just outside Keswick:

Wast Water:

Windermere

Beatherder

    So after a brief few days in the lakes district we found ourselves at another music festival by the name of Beatherder. This was a much different animal to the spectacle that is Glastonbury; about one twenty-fifth  the size in terms of people attending with only around 10 different venues playing music to Glastonbury’s 100 or so, but what it didn’t have in size it definitely made up for in atmosphere and surroundings. All the music venues were literally 30 seconds walk from the next so you could stumble out of one and straight into the next and even though there were only around 10,000 people there it still felt busy and lively. It was my favourite venue for a UK festival in the end; I particularly liked the venue situated amongst the trees. I think this is the first festival I’ve been to in England which has an actual stage inside a piece of woodland. Seeing as pretty much every single piece of natural forest and woodland in England was cut down long ago to make way for “progress” during the industrial revolution, whatever small piece of nature we have left is often highly protected with so many restrictions in place you can barely take a piss in there, let alone hold a music festival, so to find a main stage and a collection of other smaller venues and random shops nestled amongst the trees was a pleasant surprise:

The other venue I really quite liked the feel of was the “fortress”, a mock Japanese style fortress complete with samurai statues guarding the entrance. On the inside there was a raised platform all around the inside of the wall that gave you views over the inside of the dance floor which I always like. And being a completely sealed structure it held the sound in nicely and sounded pretty good in there. This venue tended to play the harder, more upbeat tunes at the festival.  It reminded me of the temple venue at Glastonbury:

 

  We actually got very few photos from the main stage for some reason, not sure why, it was a nice stage and we saw quite a lot of acts there. Being the main stage it was where the main headline acts were playing, although all bands were generally still electronic/ dance music based. The happy Mondays closed the festival, they were about as bandy as it got. The dome thing you can see in the background in these few pics is the main stage:

The other main stage was situated inside a big grass ring embankment with some Stonehenge style rocks acting as entrances:

As it turns out Beatherder was a festival well worth going to. Far, far more chilled out than the madness of Glastonbury, you could actually get up to the front of every stage without pushing and hustling your way through tens of thousands of people, plus you didn’t have to walk for three quarters of an hour just to get from one side of it to the other. It just had a really nice feel to it, loads of colourful artistic stuff to look at and random little venues and things to explore and secret underground tunnels to crawl through. I much prefer it when festivals go to the trouble of providing entertaining outside of music and aren’t simply putting a stage in a field surrounded by burger vans with corporate sponsorship plastered everywhere. Rumour has it that beatherder actually started out as a rave outfit doing unlicensed raves in the section of woodland before going legit and turning it into a full festival. It certainly had the feel that it was organised by a group of people who were doing this because they genuinely loved it, rather than for any kind of monetary reward or fame.  It just had a fun, happy vibe to it, without any kind of corporate sponsorship or bullshit advertisement which goes hand in hand with many of the bigger festivals in England. The experience was also helped by the fact  that I happened to know a large group of people going who were running the shisha tent so we had plenty of lovely people to enjoy the festival with, and also met a load more lovely people through them as well. I thoroughly enjoyed myself anyway, and would love to go again one day. Here are a few more photos from the beatherder experience, check it out in person if you get a chance: