Great fun this was. A much better selection of music than I expected, and a lot fewer ket addled morons than I'd expected as well. There was one point in the town centre where the echoing bass from three or four stages seemed to join forces and form an atonal wall of sensory abuse which obviously attracted the ketamine fuckwits like flies to shite. They accordingly sat down in their scores and blocked the pathways for those of us still capable of independant locomotion. This was but a minor annoyance however, and the crowd was mostly friendly and upbeat all weekend.
The layout added an extra dimension and the themed areas and stages within the town worked really well. Dubstep was largely confined to a single tent on the edge of the site so those of us who prefer music could easily avoid it. Besides the dubstep there was scarcely an act playing that you couldn't immediately start dancing to; whether rockabilly or ska or junge or folk or reggae. Musical highlights for me were the Fat Bastard Gangband, Rafven, Random Hand, Run Tings, the John Fairhurst Band and Babylon Circus. The Selecter were fucking awesome as well, even despite the ridiculous Sunday lunchtime graveyard slot.
The open mic/jam session tent was a nice touch. Heard some surprisingly good stuff in there, let down somewhat by a brief cameo by your correspondant on the drums because no right handed bass was available and playing guitar in a tent full of guitarists is not good for self esteem. The spoken word tent was nice as well, as part of a generally calm and civilised part of site where lots of interesting (if slightly hippyish) stuff could be found.
The food was excellent, not cheap but about what you'd pay for shite food at other festivals. My big regret was not discovering the cider bar until Sunday evening, by which time it was too late to sample all of them without dying.
The organisation was a bit shoddy in places. After setting up our camp we were told we had pitched up in a fire lane and would have to move or risk getting run over by landrovers in our sleep. No attempt to mark the fire lane had been made, but we dutifully moved anyway for the sake of an easy life. Naturally more campers came to fill in the gaps we had left and the stewards who had shifted us did nothing to move them on. Very strange. There was one point where there was not a single functioning water point which was not ideal on a hot day in august, and the water point nearest us had a habit of drying up or exploding at random intervals. The staff were always friendly though, if not always massively on the ball. The queues to get onto site on thursday were pretty obscene, and the shuttle buses from Winchester station were run on what seemed to be a 'first to the front of the melee gets a seat' basis.
Other downsides, well I suppose if people will take ketamine then dubstep is an inevitability in much the same way that with increased alcohol consumption the probability of someone putting Tom Jones on the jukebox approaches one. Still I doubt that humanity would lose anyone of consequence if all dubstep fans were summarily shot. Not really a criticism of the festival though I suppose. I can't think of anything else bad to say. Lovely venue, fantastic music, all sorts of interesting shit to see and do, great atmosphere, 8.5/10 I reckon
I bet you were glad they were lightweights and left the night before 
