TRUCK: The Godfather of Small Festivals

 

 

Truck Festival is growing year by year and is now known as the UK’s Largest ‘small’ Festival, The Godfather of Small Festivals; which i would completely agree with! Although it seems to operate under the radar among many festival goers, it manages to secure pretty big artists year on year. It is definitely one to watch!

The site itself was pretty small; the main camping was just the one field (with family, zodiac and glamping in other fields) but it worked! It was nice to see the arena from your tent, rather than knowing that later on it would be a long stumble back, navigating through fields and fields of identical tents.

 

To all those people who haven’t heard of Truck before, it is located in Oxfordshire, near Didcot and between London and Bristol – for reference. It’s pretty easy to get to, if you can travel to Didcot Parkway and hop on a festival bus or pay for a short taxi ride to the site. One more thing to mention – this year is the first year that Truck opened its doors on the Thursday due to overwhelming demand for an extra day – which worked in our favour in terms of no queuing on the Friday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the sun shining and temperatures hitting mid 20’s, we slapped on a load of glitter and headed to the main arena to see Circa Waves – which was only a 5 min walk – perks of a ‘small’ festival! To be honest, I didn’t know most of their songs, but they created the perfect atmosphere to sit, relax and eat our dinner to. I think, like us, the majority of the crowd were waiting for T-shirt weather to come on; when it did, everyone seemed to gravitate towards the stage, singing at the top of their lungs to the perfectly fitting lyrics to a beautiful sunny day.

That night Shy FX was headlining Palm City at The Market Stage. The tent was rammed, we were practically overflowing out of the sides but, this did not spoil the experience. There was such a live, energetic atmosphere as the crowd sang their hearts out and danced the night away to Gold Dust and Who Knows, it didn’t matter that we were dancing in and out of the tent.

Sadly, and in true English festival style, the heavens opened on Friday night; meaning we woke up to a not so pleasant surprise of a flooded tent. Typical…it doesn’t rain for four weeks, the UK is in a drought annnnd it decides to rain whilst we’re at a festival. However, we did not allow a little rain to dampen our spirits. The sun came out again in the afternoon anyway and temperatures were hotter than the previous day…every cloud.

 

 

 

There were some great acts on the Saturday, including The Sherlocks, Everything Everything and Jake Bugg but let’s be honest, we were all counting down the hours to the headline act – the fabulous George Ezra.

Following a pretty lazy morning of freshening up and getting our glitter on again, we all headed out to the main arena to grab some dinner and look around. The food stalls all looked incredible; so much choice and so many cute, decorated little food carts that were so hard to resist. In the end, I opted for a paella, which was 100% the nicest paella I have ever had! To kick off a night of great music, we ate our dinner whilst listening to Everything Everything.

 

 

After a quick ride on the ferris wheel (it had to be done), we made our way to the main stage to bag a decent place ready for George Ezra. First up was Jake Bugg, who I usually like, but he seemed very unenthusiastic for a particularly lively, young festival crowd; but I guess it’s part of his act?! To me, he was just the warm up act for what was to come, the main attraction, George Ezra – did I mention I’m a massive fan?

To sum George Ezra’s performance in three words they would be: surprising, intimate and memorable. I was surprised at how incredible he was; I am not joking when I say he was the best live act I have ever seen! It was intimate because the crowd felt so small, we were relatively close to the front, but the way he interacted with the audience made you feel like you knew him – it was like he was partying with us! Most of all, it was one of the happiest moments, singing along at the top of our voices, with the people I love, on a warm summer’s evening as the sun was setting, with a cider in my hand and actually being able to sing along to every song (which is a rarity for me)! Rounding off the set with his top hit, Shotgun, was a perfect end to the best weekend!

Truck, in my opinion, is very underrated. I’d never heard of the festival before finding out that a couple of my closest friends go every year. But, this added to the overall atmosphere; not commercialised, local and friendly. This was all probably helped by the sunny weather and warm evenings, but I will definitely be back, rain or shine…