Bearded Theory Festival - 2015

Special Feature

Catton Hall
South Derbyshire

21st - 24th May 2015

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We hit the road around 10am on Friday morning and headed along the A47 towards Leicester. I was really hoping to find somewhere serving a full English on the way but couldn't find anywhere. A pub (I forget the name now) just outside Leicester was serving food so we stopped for lunch. It was only after placing our order for burger and chips that we realised a missing page from the menu showed an all day breakfast, bugger! Nice burgers anyway and it was more about lining our stomachs for alcohol than anything else, next stop Bearded Theory!

We were given a generous amount of space to park the campervan and put the awning up. As soon as that was done we cracked open some Crabbies, let the drinking commence!

There were 4 main areas for music and it was looking like nothing we wanted to see would clash. We had been to Bearded Theory last year when it was really muddy and still had an excellent time, it was because of this we decided to return again this year.

We arrived at the main stage just as Hugh Cornwell was about to come on, we were gutted that we had missed Sonic Boom 6 but the sight of vodka jellies was a nice bonus.

Last year we really enjoyed The Stranglers here and Hugh Cornwell certainly performed an entertaining enough set which included many familiar Stranglers hits.

The first day at a festival is always the time when we usually drink the most and today was no exception. These hay bales seemed like the perfect spot to drink more vodka and people watch. 

The atmosphere here was really friendly and everyone was having a great time, I certainly prefer festivals this size.

This may well have been Muff Said, we only caught their last song though.

The sun was going down and there were plenty more bands on that we wanted to see tonight so we skipped dinner and headed back to the campervan for more drinks.  

I was tempted to go on some of these rides but just never got around to it.

I don't remember too much about The Mission's set except I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

I clearly wasn't the only one!

I must confess to not remembering too much about Jaya the Cat either except how amazing they were, my wife loved them too and bought a couple of CD's.

I seem to remember meeting these people outside Magical Sounds tent.

Magical Sounds had drawn me in and refused to spit me out again until the very end, I think I got back to the campervan around 3.30am, a great first day!

We woke up about 10am on the second day, the guy next to us was pouring a bowl of cereal. We decided to have some breakfast too but not quite as healthy as cereal, I put the frying pan on.

 Trying to cook meat and vegetarian breakfasts with one frying pan was something I wanted to avoid. Instead we kept it simple with tinned vegetarian sausages in beans, a fried egg, mushrooms and tomatoes. It served its purpose quite nicely and tasted great, I do wish in hindsight though that I'd tried a festival breakfast somewhere instead.

We didn't venture much further than the campervan field for most of the day except to visit Ghandi's Flip Flop to get this mixed Indian dish (Thali) for £8.50. The lime pickle was really bitter but everything else was amazing, if you ever come across Ghandi's Flip Flop at a festive they are well worth a visit.

New Model Army sounded great but some of the classics we were hoping to hear (Vengeance and Vagabonds) were not played. They seemed to be playing quite a lot of newer stuff, still really enjoyed them though.

This looked like good fun!

In the something else tent we arrived in time for Inner Terrestrials, a fast and powerful set went down a treat with the crowd, a really great band! After these had finished it would have been the perfect time to get some sleep ready for the final day. Magical Sounds sucked us back in again though with Eat Static and once again we were there till the very end. At that point it would have been a wise move to get some sleep but some familiar faces from earlier in the evening were nearby in their campervan. I popped over to say hello and didn't make it back to my campervan till 11am!

I was up making breakfast on Sunday about 1pm, we were both feeling quite ropey by now but with such a strong line up we forced ourselves back to the Woodland Stage in time to see Eastfield. I can't believe I had never seen them play until now, instantly catchy with a great sound, I can't wait to see them again sometime.

James came on to the main stage as the sun was setting. Plenty of familiar songs made up their set that was a perfect end to an amazing weekend.

A really nice touch was the fireworks display that went off above the main stage. It wasn't quite over yet though, we had one last thing to do before calling it a night.

Over on the Woodlands stage Neville Staple was entertaining the crowd with no end of classics from Pressure Drop to Ghost Town. This really was the icing on the cake for this great festival!

 We were up and off the site by 8am and Jaya the Cat provided an amazing soundtrack for the journey home.

We may not have found a full English on the way here but Little Chef sorted this out on the way home, read about that here.