Isle of Wight - June

Its "summer" so we joined in the great British tradition of attending a music festival. We had our sights set on Glastonbury, but it was not to be as we missed out on tickets. The next best option was the Isle of Wight festival held on (you guessed it) the Isle of Wight. 

This little island is off the coast of Southampton is home to about 125,000 people, and interestingly also home to poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and Queen Victoria, who built her much-loved summer residence and final home Osborne House at East Cowes.

But history was not why we packed a diverse range of clothing (bikinis and ski jackets), sleeping bags and a tent into our packs and headed off early Friday morning to get the coach to Southampton. We were there for the music man! The Isle of Wight festival started in 1968 back then it was the largest rock music event ever held. Interestingly they didn't have portaloos...I hope they had wep wipes back then. Back in the day the acts performing were the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan - even some of our older reads would know who we are talking about. For one reason or another the festival died out but was resurrected in 2002, so 2011 was the 10 year anniversary.

We recruited into the Bandits Kelley, Robyn and Dani and headed off to Southampton to catch a ferry to IOW. All week the weather had been rubbish and the forecast said that was going to carry on. We were not deterred and boarded the ferry along with thousands of others in the festival spirit.

Lou the oxymoron - rocking a hippie peace sign but at the same time barring all her teeth!

The expanded Bandits waiting for the ferry

Arriving into East Cowes the town is actually quite pretty and we thought we might go again to actually explore the Island. We hopped on the free bus to the festival site. Even though we arrived on Friday lunch time we struggled to find a campsite and ended up about a 40 min walk from the main stage and right next to a power pole. Oh well it was a spot. We (Hamish) erected our tents and got into summer clothes as the sun came out and enjoyed some drinks in the sun.

Typically the rain came along not long after but we were too excited to care. We wrapped up and put our gumboots on and walked to the main stage. The set up was so so so cool. There are sooooo many people and so many different stalls selling random things, and amusement park rides, and food stalls selling every different type of food you could imagine.

Kaiser Chiefs and Kings of Leon were the main acts of Friday night, very cool sounds and very chilled out crowd. We danced the night away and had great time.

The rain starts and the party begins

After a long walk back, we collapsed into our tents. All 4 girls did not sleep a wink as it was reportedly minus 4 degrees, however Hamish slept like a baby. Stupid boys and their internal heating system.

Saturday was beautiful, sunny and warm. We chilled out on our picnic blanket and reflected on a fun night. Lunch rolled around and we decided to make the trek into the main area to get some food. 

On the way, Hamish was stopped by a cameraman and asked him if he wanted to be filmed, I wandered over and the guy asked us if we would mind someone filming us walking around for a Vodafone ad! Of course we said yes. So we had to act casual, which is tough, and walk around for about 5 minutes, while this crew were following and filming us! It was a laugh. We then had to sign a non disclosure agreement and then the guy casually mentioned that if they use the footage with us in it then we would get up to £400 each! Result!

Hamish's dream - 4 screaming girls...

Made us feel very sick

So we celebrated with a lunch of salad (yes even on the Isle of Wight we tried to be healthy) and headed back to our tent for a few (cheaper) drinks and music trivia games in the sun.
Saturday night's line up was the epic Foo Fighters, preceded by Pulp who were actually quite good. Foo Fighters were amazing, it felt like they were on the stage for 30 seconds but it was a full set. Again the crowd was in such a good mood and the night was capped off with fireworks.

Dave Grohl

The second night's sleep was much better, once I realised that you had to put all your clothes on and then your sleeping bag. But alas we awoke to rain. Thinking it would be a passing shower, Hamish and I got up and dressed and headed to the Kelloggs tent where we got a bowl of cereal, a coffee, a piece of fruit and a muesli bar for 5 quid! Loved the marketing at the festival, so much random cool stuff.

We went back to our site to find the rest of the girls still in their tent refusing to leave until it stopped raining. Their tent had a bit of a blow out and was soaked through, so Hamish being the nice guy spent about an hour trying to fix it in the howling gales and rain, while the girls sat inside eating lollies. 

Lunch rolled around and it did not look like clearing up so we made the call. We decided to pack up and go home early. It was not an easy decision to make, but it was wet and cold and we had lost that festival feeling. So we did a quick phone call to change our bus tickets and packed up in record time. There were so many other people that were packing up so we felt a bit better about ourselves (about 20,000 apparently). We managed to get on a ferry really quickly and back to Southampton by around 2pm. Trouble was our bus wasn't until 8pm….so we found ourselves a pub and set up camp there for a fair few hours. A hot roast dinner and numerous cups of tea put smiles back on our faces and we played endless games of cards. A nice wee afternoon actually! 

Raincoats were a lost cause at this point...

We wearily boarded the coach and journeyed back to London. It's amazing how being wet and cold takes it out of you! Luckily we had organised a day off on the Monday so we had a day to recover and do a thousand loads of washing.

We had such a good time, and would definitely go to another festival again. Even the rain couldn't dampen that feeling.

Highlight: The music, the set up, good friends. It was all good!
Lowlight: The weather, and both of us getting sick and we still couldn't shake it 2 weeks later!
Interesting Fact #1: It's possible to have a diet of lollies, chips and vodka for 3 days and still lose weight...:)
Interesting Fact #2: There was about 90,000 people at the festival. That would make it NZ's 8th largest city after 7th placed Dunedin.