CARFEST 2012

For my dad's birthday my mum bought tickets for Chris Evans' Car-Fest and this weekend we travelled the 4 and a half hour drive to Jody Sheckter's farm near Overtone in Hampshire to enjoy the festivities. When we booked the tickets we didn't manage to get camping tickets so we ended up staying in a little B&B type place around 10mins from the festival. This might have been a blessing in disguise because I don't think we would have managed to survive the whole weekend without one of us having a mental breakdown cramped in a little 4 man tent! After staying in a tent for 3 nights last week at V festival, it was nice to come home and being able to have a nice shower in the evening!

We arrived at the festival quite early Saturday morning and I immediately took the camera out as we walked passed the TrialStar Motorbikes in the Show Arena.

We stayed to watch those guys for a while, then we ventured further down towards the Hill Climb.

We brought some camping chairs with us - what a god send! After a couple of hours walking around the festival looking at the cars and different stalls we unfolded the chairs and perched ourselves down to watch the awesome hill climb! We did this with a nice bottle of Cider and flapjacks that was bought in the Best of British tent!

Those cars were spectacular! (More pics from the hill climb to come (sunday) ) I definitely saw some cars that I'd like to see in my garage! Especially the old Fiat Abarth 500, a 1963 ferrari 250 GT SWB (one of Chris's magnificent 7), MG Metro 6R4, aston martin v12 zagato etc. . . As you can see I want 90% of the cars I saw!

As well as admiring the cars in the hill climb we also went to see the other array of cars that were on show around the field. We saw some classic VW's - the Beetle and the campervan! Yeeeees, I love these cars! On our walk we also saw some classic Aston Martins and a  red Ford Escort Mark 2 that my dad use to own. We also saw a Cortina that my grandmother learnt to drive in!

 The rally cars were also so cool!

I liked this one as it had welsh writen on it's side!

At 5 o'clock and after a nice paella for lunch, we took our chairs close to the front of the main stage ready for the Rockaoke. We didn't use these chairs much for the rest of the night as the music was so good that you just wanted to dance! As well as the bands being awesome, Chris Evans doing his DJ set during the breaks between bands was equally as awesome! The Rockaoke was such a good idea, it got everyone singing dancing and laughing as we saw middle age men (women and children) living out an unrealised dream of being a rock star for 3 minutes!


CHRIS EVANS CARFEST from lisagwawr on Vimeo.

The Counterfeit stones were on later that night and they were superb! The whole act was just awesome and everyone was up singing and dancing to the rock and roll classics! The feeling were on before the headline acts - Texas! Both were very good although Texas were fantastic. Sharleen really got the crowd rocking and little children were on their parents' shoulders dancing away at close to 11pm!

Sunday we watched most of the hill climb throughout the morning and early afternoon but not before having a go on the Top Gear track simulator and grabbing a delicious Laverstoke Park Farm burger with mozzarella, fried beans and lettuce! YUUUUUMMMM!!!

 

CARFEST HILL CLIMB from lisagwawr on Vimeo.


We were just about to head over to the auction when we heard over the tanoy that Chris Evans was coming down the hill climb with MARK WEBBER!!, Jody Sheckter and Nick Mason. Obviously I raced over to the hay bales to take pictures!

 After they passed, who was leaning against the barrier opposite me, but Paul Hollywood from the awesome Great British Bake Off and soon after he was joined by his colleague Mary Berry! Yeeees!

We couldn't come to Carfest without going to watch the dancing diggers! They were so strange yet so good! Who even thought about the whole thing? Who woke up one day and thought I'm going to choreograph a show for diggers?!

While we were walking over to the main stage ready for the afternoon music we passed the Daily Mail Live Magazine tent and who was there but TV Chef and petrol head, James Martin! His cars filled the tent and he even brought his Ferrari 275 GTB (What a brave man!) That was estimated at anything from £700,000 to a cool £3 million!!!! There was also a lush 1963 Works Mini Cooper and a 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO!

We also passed some new cars from the likes of Bentley, ferrari, Jaguar and Aston Martin.

We eventually made it over to the stage with some stiff necks after spending much of the afternoon looking up to the sky as so many  spectacular air shows were going on!

We watched the final of Cakes V's Pies and then the music started with the Bootleg Beatles and finished with a very good show from Razorlight!

People were getting married in this hot air balloon at the end of the festival! 

What an awesome weekend filled with awesome cars, awesome food and awesome music. I guess you can say it was quite an awesome affair! One of the best things about the weekend however, was how safe you felt in the middle of 20,000 people! We could leave our bags on the floor behind us as we danced throughout the night without having to worry about anyone stealing anything! Children were running around the fields with other little children as relaxed parents chatted to one another. We're already looking forward to next years Carfest! - needles to say we thoroughly enjoyed!

Thanks Chris!

IT'S WELLIES TIME!

The day after A level results day, myself and a friend headed down to Swansea by half 9 so that we could catch our bus up to Stratford. The reason for this was that we were going to V Festival. The bus ride up was quite eventful as we were stranded in a services 2 hours away from Weston park (where the festival was being held) as the bus battery had run flat! Eventually we got going again and made it by around 4pm. It had been raining for most of the morning so by the time we arrived  the fields had turned in to more of a mud bath than anything else! It took us around 30mins to find a place to position a tent, once we found it, gosh, we were so thankful! The bags on our backs were so heavy and we nearly decided just to sit in the middle of the field and just sleep on the grass! We were lucky with our tent because it was very near the burger fan so it was easy to find in darkness on the way back from the arena! The toilets and water were close but far enough that we were able to reach them in a couple of seconds yet not suffer the stench of the thousands of people who used the portaloos!

Friday night there wasn't much going on in the arena. There was a fair a couple of bars, but that's it. As a result we decided to hit the hay early and be ready for the next two long days! We'd planed who we were going to watch on the Saturday so once we arrived down in the arena we knew where we needed to be and at what time so that we didn't miss a thing! There wasn't much on until around half 1 so we went to watch Lawson. I'd never heard of them before but they were surprisingly good and reminded me a lot of the Script. We grabbed some lunch and then made our way to the main stage where we were for the rest of the day. We saw, Ollie Murs, Madness, TOM JONES!, Tinie Tempah, Snow Patrol and THE KILLERS! I was so excited to see all of these awesome people, especially The Killers, who were awesome!

The next day, again there wasn't much on until after lunch, and as it was raining so much in the morning, we headed in to the glee tent to watch some comedians. Once the rain eased down we heard some Proclaimers from afar as we ate our lunch to the sound of "I will walk 500 miles . . . "! Next on stage were Rodrigo y Gabriella, they were this guitar duo which were awesome! Emile Sande sang after, her voice was awesome! I wasn't sure if I like James Morrison who was on in the afternoon but he was incredible! His voice is so soulful and bluesy, totally different to what he sounds like when he sings the love songs he sings. Keane we on next, they were good, not outstanding, but good. I moved over to the Undercover stage to watch the comedian Tim Minchin. He was hilarious! It wasn't a stand-up gig but he just played a load of songs he had written, which ranged from Cheese to Woody Allen Jesus! Once Tim Minchin's set was over I headed back to the main stage for what I'd been looking forward to most that day - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds! The man was superb! He played a mix of NGHFB and Oasis songs. The crowd new every single word of every song he played, even the brand new stuff - it was awesome. The headliners Sunday night were the Stone Roses, when they walked on stage the first thing that came in to my head was like WOW, "Ian looks like the exact older version of Noel!" It was so weird! The Stone Roses rocked it though. I don't think the guitar stopped playing for the whole set! They were superb.

We woke super early Monday morning, packed our tent and caught the bus back home!

What a pretty darn tooting great weekend!