And so, having extracted ourselves from the mudbath at Sunrise Celebration we found ourselves in the much more green & genteel surroundings of Cheltenham Racecourse for the Wychwood Festival.

Festival Eye magazine describes Wychwood as being a mini-Glastonbury but I’m not altogether sure how they draw the comparison. Glastonbury has a Cider Bus whereas Wychwood has a Pimms Bus and at Wychwood pretty much everything other than the nightly Silent Disco shuts down at 11pm. But to rant on about how sanitized the whole thing felt would be unfair as it is clearly geared towards the middle aged, middle classed “Henry put your Crocs on daaahrling” clientele that it predominantly attracts. The festival claims to have the highest ratio of kids to adults of any in the country and it certainly gives the likes of other kid friendly fests like WOMAD & Solfest a run for their money in the amount of entertainment laid on for the junior punters.

Wychwood is an “arena” festival with plenty of space in the camping & campervan areas, which are arranged inside the racetrack. No alcohol is allowed to be taken into the arena, which adjoins the grandstand, but as well as the Pimms & Margarita bars the two main bars have a fair range of ales & ciders courtesy of the Wickwar Brewing Company. The Stagefright Bitter at £2:50 a pint was particularly well received.

The Main Stage is outdoors and some of the area in front of it is concreted. The second stage is housed in a Big Top tent which also hosts one of the main bars and the Silent Disco. Thanks to the wet weather in the days preceding the festival the tent did smell rather like a mushroom farm! There was a third stage in the other bar and also some smaller stages in the numerous workshop tents. Groovy Movie were also in attendance with their solar powered cinema.

There was an impressively diverse selection of catering outlets. One in particular caught my eye with the crocodile burgers and scorpion lollies they had for sale. Plenty of unusual stalls to browse for clothing and jewellery as well as the more ubiquitous hat twattery & fairy wings.

The toilets were as clean as I’ve seen anywhere in festival-land. Wychwooders do seem to enjoy queuing but by timing ones eating, drinking & toiletry habits outside of peak times it is possible to avoid these almost completely. I wish the same could be said for the camping chairs which got in the way everywhere!

So all in all not the weekend of debauchery we had envisaged at Sunrise Celebration but a very pleasant finale to our little 12 day road trip nonetheless. I certainly wouldn’t count out a return to Wychwood at some time in the future. Especially if they have more performances like the one the Imagined Village collective put in on the Sunday evening. That really was something to remember!