The Bad The Good and The Muddy

We were in a fix, all of us, thousands of us, it was July 2009.

The story was that the government had sabotaged the festival at the very last minute.

How ? We didn't know. Why? We could guess.

What were we going to do now, where could we go? We needed to work as we had just lost our rent money. The Big Green Gathering  http://www.greengathering.org.uk was going to go bust by the will of the authorities.

We needed a solution and luckily we now had a mobile phone but no laptop as we were still not quite cyber citizens, just artisans cruising around living on the road in the summer every year on a different route as festivals change dates or new ones would appear on the circuit.

Which Festival Where ?  

So we turned to our trustee Festival Eye magazine, the festival bible back in 2009 full of phone numbers information and festival fun. After some hours ploughing through it and weighing up our options we finally got a result.

Explaining our predicament to Nozstock Festival https://nozstock.com and telling them that we sold festival essentials like hats, pocket belts, clothes for all occasions and a wide range of silver and gem-stone jewellery they said yes, they have a space and we were welcome to come along to trade, all we had to do was get there on time !

So a quick jaunt to the supermarket and we were on our way to Bromyard or thereabouts.

We headed west and journeying for most of the afternoon we finally arrived to The Hidden Valley. The crew were lovely and chilled, things were coming together and we were directed to our pitch and on our way there we saw a sign that said, ‘Nozstock makes you better’. Haha that put a smile on our faces and it was true, we were feeling way much better. We got stuck in to putting the stall up and after a few hours, job done. We had some dinner and crashed out. 

Apples and Trolls

The next morning we had time to take in where we had actually landed and fell in love with the place, we were opposite the main stage in a small field which was partly an old apple orchard strewn with couches, set in amongst rolling hills surrounding the farm, very quaint and quirky. We discovered more funny random signs everywhere and a troll like creature living under the bridge that took you though to The Dingle. The sound of chainsaws burst into the cosy space, time to get busy time to get ready for the festival ahead.

Welly Fest

As the public arrived so did the rain and it kept on coming, it was proper muddy but we were okay in our corner, the crew worked tirelessly keeping on top of the mud with tons of wood chip brought in to help. Unperturbed, the show went on, the rain and the mud bring people closer as it often does, we were all in it together and that’s the feeling we always have at Nozstock, always a friendly welcome with everyone aiming towards the same goal to have a great festival and great it was !

We weren’t to be disappointed as our view of main stage was graced by punk rock favourites The Buzzcocks https://www.buzzcocks.com who were so loud they made the mud wiggle.

Babyhead ska beats had the place jumping and Andy C, https://andyc.cc drum and bass legend rocked The Raveyard.

Nozstock is now a firm date in our festival calendar and never fails to surprise with the great effort they put into creating a great weekend for everybody with always something to delight.