This bank holiday weekend myself and a group of friends made our way to Creamfields, expecting the worst with ponchos packed as the weather looked like it could be hit and miss for the next few days. After arriving early Friday morning we pitched our tent in the red campsite which looked relatively close to the arena on our maps.

Photo: Geoffrey Hubbel

As the sun beat through the clouds we made our way to the first events of the day and it was straight to the Armada music tent, this tent was one of the largest arena's at Creamfields this year which gave the arena an electric atmosphere to see Orjan Nilsen for some progressive trance to kick start our day. In the Revealed Arena it was time for Hardwell's first set of the weekend. Voted No.1 DJ in 2013 and 2014 we were not disappointed.

Photo: Geoffrey Hubbel

There festival had a wide range of food on offer, including a wide range of vegetarian options, so I did not have a problem finding some tasty treats on offer. To be expected the prices were relatively high but similar to any festival I have been to previously. One thing I would suggest is that you bring your own bottled water into the arena, there are lots of water stations to fill up and the bottled water there costs £2.50 which was a bit too much for the amount of dancing I was doing.

Photo: Alex Lonsdale

We then made our way to the front for Armin Van Buuren’s first set of the weekend, this was amazing as we were inches away from one of the world's most renowned DJ’s, we could see how he was feeding from the crowd’s reaction to the music he was playing.

Early Saturday morning as the rest of the campers arrived for the festival we made full use of our club class package that we had purchased before the festival, this gave us access to showers and clean toilets. These toilets and showers were actually clean, the only downside was that there was a long wait to use the facilities. All that said I would highly recommend buying these if you fancy staying clean and using clean toilets.

After quite a lot of drinks on Saturday still in the sunshine we decided to move towards the arena to see the up and coming 19 year old Martin Garrix whose set was on fire, he played a lot of the tracks that have made Garrix one of the DJ’s he is today such as 'Animals' and 'Wizard'. Straight after Garrix, Armin Van Buuren came back to play on the main stage, the size of the main stage this year was huge and it consisted of massive monitors that made the stage feel like one giant cinema screen. The arena was packed with thousands of people, to watch Armin bring Mr Probs on stage for his song Waves this really got the crowd going and everyone was singing along together.

Photo: Geoffrey Hubbel

Avicii headlined the south stage, his set consisting of a lot of classics such as 'Wake Me Up', 'Hey Brother' and many more. At the end of his set he started to mix more songs that he didn’t create with more of a bouncy sound that got the crowd going and dancing. Avicii’s set got cut short as the main stages had to be shut down at 11pm sharp, to which he said “I am literally getting dragged off the stage”. After this the stage was illuminated by a barrage of fireworks which lit up the entire crowd and got everyone looking towards the sky. We made our way back to the tents as we wanted a drink and wasn’t coming back to the arena till 2am that morning. Late at night we went to see Knife Party, unfortunately the temperature had dropped and we found it hard to stay warm during the set so we reluctantly made it back to the tent to start again on Sunday morning.

Waking up Sunday morning we noticed there had been a little bit of rain the night before but the sun still broke through the clouds and dried up all the tents and ground, this year Creamfields had filled all the main paths with wood chips which stopped the need for wellies as there wasn’t any mud at all. The queues for food wasn't so bad either, they were only really bad in the mornings and after the arena had closed. The queues for the phone charging on the other hand were constantly large which wasn’t a problem for me as I had brought a charging pack for my phone that kept it going all weekend, and I would recommend this to any reveller.

Sunday afternoon we made our way to see the Pepsi Max Arena, it was old school trance all afternoon and that suited us just fine. First off there was the special guest Paul Oakenfold who was followed up by the one and only Paul Van Dyk who eventually played 'For An Angel', but he did tease the crowd for a long time with snippets of the song before he actually dropped it. One of the most impressive sets this year at Creamfields was in fact Afrojack. We weren’t expecting the set to have been as good as it actually was, with the sun setting in the background it gave a great backdrop for the DJ to lay down some of his music.

Finally late Sunday night, what we had waited for all weekend finally had come and it was time for Tiesto. It was definitely worth the wait, the atmosphere from the crowd was intense. The South stage was packed from front to back but we managed to squeeze through the crowd to get a good view of Tiesto himself. Tiesto let everyone know that he was filming the music video for one of his new songs that night which sent the crowd crazy and the flairs came out which lit up the heads around the crowd. The set was the highlight of a great weekend, he seemed to grasp what the crowd wanted to hear and always kept the crowd bouncing all night. To end it all Tiesto played what he called “One of my best tracks"; Adagio for Strings. This topped off the weekend perfectly for me and there wasn’t a better way for it to have all ended in my opinion.

Creamfields 2015 was a wonderful  experience with great people, fantastic music and an electric atmosphere, see you same time next year.

Photo: Geoffrey Hubbel

A limited amount of 2016 Early Bird tickets go on sale on Friday 4th Sept at 10am, next years festival takes place from 26th-28th August 2016.

Review: Oliver Abrahams