Wickerman Festival 2006

The Wickerman Festival is held slap bang in the middle of our local stomping ground, so we couldn't really not go could we... especially as we went last year and enjoyed it. It's an event that invites people to arrive on Thursday and leave Sunday morning, but we had Saturday tickets only so arrived early afternoon with our new improved (i.e. slightly bigger) tent. We wouldn't have been ashamed with the old one here though as there were lots of folk with little tents.

Some tents were arranged like Wildwest Wagon Circles, but instead of the campfire these had disposable foil barbeques as the centrepiece!

We followed the rules and parked in one section and camped in another, although we wished we'd been a bit braver and camped where we landed... but our patch wasn't too sloped, although we regretted our decision not to blow up that airbed...

The fields the festival is staged on are not far from some rock art so Blokey kept one eye on the outcrops during our visit!

The toilets were already quite ripe but if you looked hard enough you could usually find one that you can squat over (I think festival toilets should be of the old "French-style" and be done with it)

The atmosphere at the Wickerman Festival is great, mostly I think because they try to make it family-friendly, and even the boistrous Glaswegians down during their "Fair" holiday would respect this. I swear that there were some people that didn't leave their tent huddles the whole time we were there.

We made our way to the stalls and shops, my favourite bit of the festival! There's loads of things here from crafty stuff to facepainting (no, I wasn't brave enough) to poetry-reading to first aid to haggis pakoras... and the fun fair which included a spacehopper rodeo and the big bungee, which was £15 a shot or we would have been on it.
There was also a kids' thing going on involving some sort of dragon thingy.



Oh yeah and the music... well I have to admit here to not knowing anything about anyone so usually casually drift around and between the tents and stages with no particular intentions, this is a plan which usally allows us to chance upon some great stuff we wouldn't otherwise hear. This time however I think our timing was completely off and we kept missing things we wished we'd seen!

There are a few other blogs with reports about the Wickerman Festival, this one's quite good and talks about the music in a way that I can't.



Part of the wandering explorations took us past the Wickerman itself, which looked a bit like a Wickerwoman to me. This year they were letting people get close-up but not too personal, so I got some good shots of it.

We met up with some friends and sat about and chatted and drank and ate and larked about, at one point we got waterbombed but no-one minded, in fact we pinpointed the source and cheered when we saw them target some other poor unsuspecting lads on the other side of the mound.

We spotted this guy - complete with classy outfit of Scotland shorts and coordinating trainers; special mention to the wonderful map tattoo but please also note the St Andrews cross shaved into his head!



We did some more wandering, then headed back to the top of the mound to get ready for the finale - the burning of the Wickerman. I was freezing last year and had learned my lesson, so I was wrapped up this time, also the show was mercifully shorter than the last one (glad to see the organisers also were learning from their mistakes).





We went back to our tent and I slept OK thanks to my sensory-depriving mask and ear-plugs ;)

The next morning we went on a hunt to find the porridge stall, but failed miserably so had a fried egg roll instead and wandered about the field, there were still a few poor souls finding their way home, and I found £3 that folk had dropped (thanks)



The main reason I like a good festival is because I am a Peoplewatcher. There was prime peoplewatching here this year, some great outfits and I was playing a game with myself trying to decide who was a bank manager or headteacher.

Looking forward to Solfest ...