I’m just seeing this thread now. I was there yesterday and it was a good day out. I was there with my two kids and by the time faces were painted, an ice cream for each of them, a go on the rides and two pints for me, I was £60 down.
Security was very heavy, a lot of them dressed to look as much like police as possible. There were searches on the way in with piles of booze which had been confiscated. I saw some tooled up security frogmarch two guys out. I’m not sure what they had done, but I did see that it was an undercover guy and girl who directed them to where they were. The undercover guy was dressed very scruffily but had a walkie talkie. The girl looked like a suburban housewife and tried to direct the heavy mob without being seen.
There was some good music on, although I didn’t stay for the Stereo MCs. There was a village green stage which had a great gospel choir and a new acts stage with some singer songwriter stuff on. The one time I was down by the main stage, it was the act just before Stereo MCs who were apologising that a power cut was forcing them to abandon their set.
Strangely, there were crates and crates of orange squash with very short date being given away. Thousands upon thousands of bottles. People carrying crates at a time. Nobody giving them out, just a free forall. What I would expect to cost 50p a bottle in the tramp’s buffet and people were breaking their backs to carry a year’s supply with them, even though it will be past its sell by in a month.
Gipsy Hill brewery had a stall doing pints of their Hepcat for £6 a pint which, while expensive, was tasty and efficiently served with minimal queueing. The bar at the main stage was charging £4.50 for a 440ml of Red Stripe, which would be hard to hand over.
A good day out nevertheless and I’ll go back next year.
