Sorry for delay, Ive had fckn COVID
Gottwood Review
Day One
Firstly, I was a “festival virgin” up until Friday and 5/6 hours in a dance music environment per session is normally enough for me. Festivals just weren’t a thing when I was younger, you went in a club a 11pm and left at 3am; in the case of Ibiza the time is pushed forward obviously. This event was Thurs to Sun but my daughter (S) had worked til 8pm on Thursday so we opted for 3 nights. S is a hairdresser, as such she works some late nights in the week.
We arrived around 12pm, no queues for the car park: it was a £15 charge to park the car which was fair for the 3/4 days that it covered. If you wanted you could enter and leave the car parking field at anytime. At the main gate I had an EDT bottle taken from me as they have no glass policy which I had forgotten about (S later got this back for me after playing some Jedi mind trick on the more mature male entrance supervisor and returned it to the car) and a small claw hammer that I was going to maim someone with later that weekend. Oddly, on Sunday I saw some guy dressed as a hybrid sailor/shepherd carrying a 6ft stick as part of his get up, work that out?
There was a bit of a trek to the campsite and arrival there we were met with a sea of tents pitched really close together, but eventually made our way to the bottom of the “Quiet” area where we found a very spacious pitch overlooking the fields and sea. I hit a low point at this stage, I hadn’t slept well the night before and had been really busy the day prior doing Dad prep with tent, equipment and provisions. I think asking Dad to come along was a wise move for her as I sorted everything; in hindsight I over planned/overthought which is typical of me. The walk with heavy bags wasn’t the easiest, albeit it was only around 15 mins. The weather was not that good either; its been terrible summer weather in the North West up til now and temps out of the sun have barely reached 15/16 degrees C and very changeable. It had rained heavily the previous night but the ground had dried out enough.
Our tent is a 6 person one, its around 12 years old but it was erected and set up within around an hour. It was windy and at one point the back poles gave way and snapped which hI had to rectify with some tactical rope moving. Just chilled for a bit on the camp chairs and had some Pot Noodles, a brew and some choc bars. We had decided not to bring any booze with us, I’m not that fussed on drinking warm alcohol and wasn’t bothered paying the festival drinks prices so there were no pre’s. We got ready around 3.30pm and headed into the main site around 4pm.
First stop was one of the many bars available. I decided to stick with beer all weekend, S had the same plan. The beer option was Utopia brand and was decent enough, they had this in pints and cans, not all the bars had beer pumps. It was just shy of £7 a pint or a 440ml can, there was an initial charge of £1.50 for the plastic pint cup. The other beer they were pushing was a fruity Jubel brand in around 3 flavours. The spirits were pretty good standard of (Absolut, Jamesons etc) and were I think £9 for a double with mixer, Double VRB were £10. I did notice some short pouring when S had the odd spirit but couldn’t be arsed challenging it. It subsequently levelled itself out with a few wrongly charged rounds in my favour so hey ho.
We had a quick whistle stop tour of the site from S. She had been as a day punter last year on the Sunday and seemed to know her bearings quite well. The clouds had now gone and we were searching out some sun. The site is made up of 5 main areas and then the same again in smaller spaces; I wont go into these in detail now but needless to say you are spoilt for choice. We had an app called Festpilot which let you plan in a schedule so we added our loose plan.
First stop was an area called the Curve which is a covered area and overlooked the lake. There was a local lad called Jack Hackney playing there, S cuts his girlfriends hair and she was there too. Apparently they had the space all afternoon with their “Vibrant” brand and he was on from 4.30pm, we caught all his set. A nice settling in of what I would class as decent Tech House, the type that keeps you interested. Good vibe there but not full by any means, just a nice warm up. In fact when his set had finished a new guy unconnected with his gang came on and the placed emptied. Jack has clearly done well at the age of 22 running his own night and his mixing was decent tbh albeit he did love a spin back. Ending up chatting to randoms after for a bit with the theme that would carry on over the weekend “So whats your relationship then?”
Around 6pm we moved onto an area called the Lighthouse which is the next area down. This is open air and is as you can imagine is a pretend Lighthouse that houses the DJ right next to the lake. KT was on the decks, she was spinning Vinyl which so many of he DJs we saw were also doing. I cant put my finger on the exact style of music maybe the harder side of melodic house; not proggy but with some infectious bass lines. I really enjoyed this set and she had gathered the right crowd for the duration. Had a good emotional moment at one point as things had started to come together now I was a few pints in and settled with the place. I don't do drugs and tbh, this is was enough for me; right music, right time.
After that we minced around a bit looking at the areas we hadn’t checked out yet, and then went for some food in the main food area. There was a good choice of fodder, Paella, Pizza, Toasties, Chicken all in there little Christmas Market style huts. We opted for a very decent Fries stall where we in short had a very posh chips and curry which filled me up good style. There were many other food outlets dotted around the site, more than enough. They ranged from around £7 to £14 which was decent price given the good quality.
Now it was back to the Curve for Sonja Moonear, unfortunately missing the first 20 mins of her set. This had clashed with Laidlaw at Trigon but it was was too rammed in there so we didn’t go in, quickly making our way over. What a good move this was, this was joint set of the weekend for us and was absolute class. Again she was on the wax and she and the crowd were enjoying every minute. It was busy but not silly busy. On the subject of busy, she played what I would describe as busy minimal which was very infectious keeping your feet firmly on the floor and moving. Absolute class and she engaged/read the crowd really well. There was no Shazaming either so I didn’t get any tracks she played. On this note, hardly anyone one is on their phone and that was the theme all weekend and it felt wrong taking a pic, video or just staring at your screen. I think we took around 30 pics between us and a few vids and a lot of those were of he view at the campsite or early in the day. The signal was gash too and ending up killing all battery killers to conserve power.
Was a pretty hard act follow, we made our way back through the site towards Ricky’s. This tended to play Techno over the weekend and was a suitable little finish having a last hour or so in there. No idea who was playing but it was decent enough. My ear protection came in handy; I recently upgraded to some ACS Custom. They are about £150 a pair but are well worth it, you just became paranoid about losing them. If they are over your budget then S was using some Earpeace (brand) that are about £20 from Amazon.
TBC
ps I would add some images but after a Mac upgrade to Sonoma its lost my link to iCloud photos and I haven't the capacity to sort it out atm
