This years Beatherder was bold, bright and beautiful. Some of us had been before and some were new timers, so the energy was high with excitement and expectation and this festival is not one to disappoint. For all of us, it was an epic adventure to be herded to the beats at this amazing festival. Friends we met both old and new were all enjoying the adventuring to be had in the ever giving, mind bending and constantly entertaining barmy revelry of this fantastic festival in the stunning Ribble Valley.

It amazes and pleases you on every level. There really is something there for everyone. No matter if you want to dance until dawn, chill on a beautiful hill, use the onsite dating agency or simply blend in among the chirpy, smiling crazy people. Beatherder has every level of fun from quiet chilled and pleasurable to in your face laughable and loud fast paced and nuts, as well as every possible fun option in between. Beatherder is a festival that’s got so much to offer it’s ultimately about how much stimulus you can take. Around every corner another beat, around every corner a goggle eyed treat and if it all gets a bit mental, around every corner an enticing seat.

Friday was all about bearings, orientation and exploration.

We wandered the site showing friends the madness and marvellous layout and along the way we caught the awesome and inspiring Good Foxy in the Factory. We all thoroughly enjoyed their unique and enthralling story telling songs, with heavy rock sections with sprinklings of historical influence coupled with the entrancing vocals and immense skills from this hugely impressive young local Lancaster band. What a start to the weekend.

Everyone loved discovering the quirky Street with its various venues, such as the Church, the Hotel California and The Garage all constantly playing out various banging tunes and DJ sets while amusing the crowds with underground crawl spaces that make you appear in the phone box at one end of the street, or bouncing cars you can dance on or attempt to play musical statues on in the daylight hours. And that’s not including all the additional bizarre things to have a look at or to wander inside, like Nicola Hebson’s strange but stuffed curiosity shop or the experiential Barbers shop or the Candy store and the ever elusive secret swimming pool. The street is an interesting place to traverse while tapping your feet.

You can enter the street from the top, opposite the rather obscure Trash Manor, complete with pole gyrating robots on each side of the grandiose stage. The enclosed garden it situated around a strange central fountain with headless mannequins and large sheltered couch areas, with a huge front room style bar area to ensure you lord it up while you sip from your hard core dance and trance cup in the manor.

You can also find the Street by walking through the most marvellous atmospheric mayhem of the Toil Trees. Not to be misheard frequently as toiletries. Many many people seemed to be off to enjoy their toiletries...

In the gorgeously decorated and flagged main arena site, you have the spacious main stage, and free standing venues of their own gravitas such as The Factory, The Fortress, The Working Men’s Social Club, The StumbleFunk and the Snug. The Snug was our favourite small banging venue as it had such a variety of seating around it, upturned boat, LED patterned wall and many good old fashioned benches to meet new friends and take a rest when the dancing was just so energetic. You could watch the world go past, hear the music from inside and chat with random people about the costumes dancing, drifting, dotting by. Trying to name all the effort for the fancy dress theme, this year the letter being the D from the word Beatherder. So you can imagine, there were many Daleks, Dinosaurs, Dragons, Deviants and Disco balls. The consensus on the favourite had to be the Detectors, all of who were running around the Toil Trees in full scientific explorer gear with their metal detectors and props held high. The least effort in our opinion but still humorous were the troupe with felt traffic cones on their heads declaring to be a diversion.

The main arena is full of fantastic places to sit, including huge oversized deck chairs. And even more places to eat, the variety is there certainly to be scoffed from. Weekend favourites were the Fish Finger stand and the wonderful Falafel stand opposite the Factory.

You can dive off the main arena into another sub area called Beyond. Here you can explore down a rather dark and mysterious tunnel that leads to wonderful places that mess with your senses. The Illustrious Society, where the dress code is strictly adhered to, the wooden saloon and the finery quite divine. There’s also the Boombox garden, a strange white mirrored room and the day glow psyche trance assaulting each of your senses in the Sunrise area. It can be a bit far gone in Beyond. But with five different areas to explore even 20 minutes in each whittles away over an hour and that’s without the hilarity of trying to enter or escape the dark tunnel safely and cross the beautiful rustic bridge back over the river into the main arena again. Beyond was a place to go to wake yourself up and could excite anyone with a short attention span and indecisive ears.

After all this exploring it was an easy decision from the programmed line up to station ourselves on top of a bench table and dance the night away in front of the main stage, first seeing the uplifting and funky Milky Chance, then Kelis who built us up and down with a medley of many songs and then banging out crowd favourites such as Milkshake, Accapella, Brave and 4^th of July. The Friday night finale of Crystal Fighters was an immensely pleasurable experience. So many festival folk dancing arms wide, round and around, singing along with big smiles and feet stomping like happy hippies.

The Crystal Fighters performed hard and the crowd soaked it up adoringly with the exploding streamers and excited screamers until the lights went out.

We spent the rest of the evening exploring the ever changing eclectic night activities. Underneath The Toil Trees we found a beautiful area of strange things glowing in the woods, spiralling sky-wards trees and the sunken bar of Angies den. A corner with huge four poster wooden beds, if you needed to rest your head. Not likely with the atmosphere and loudness of the variety of beats keeping you up and at ‘em. There really is something very special about the Toil Trees; tribal, welcoming, enveloping and the sound from the stage carries around the dancing trees. There is such a wealth of amusement in the Toil Trees woodland, you could be in there all weekend.

More ominous skies were looming as daylight began to appear, so we retired to our beds. Heads full of laughter and feet slightly sore. Our first day at Beatherder exceptional, we could not have asked for anything more.

Saturday was a reluctant late start. 

The downpours and the wind was making us scuttle under covered spaces. Once we had left the comfort of our camper we seemed to dash from set to set. Not quite knowing if we got there yet. The many bars on site always fast serving and efficient. We kept moving around catching bits and pieces. Including; TWOGOOD Djs at the Ring, who were on the same time as The Sugar Hill Gang on the main stage, so we did a bit of both. The Sugar Hill Gang were great, old school hip hop fun then more modern house and dance with smile inducing mental mash ups from TWOGOOD DJs.

Then it was in and out of the Snug to enjoy Disco Shiva with intermittent cool down breaks. While wandering across site for necessary refills we caught the sounds of Stereo MC, a real blast from the past. The crowd were really enjoying it and the Stereo MCs sure kept us reminiscing while we had a few mouth watering food dilemmas.

Our big must hear of the night and a favourite set all weekend had to be the almighty Sister Bliss and her Faithless set. So huge were the crowds, they were bursting from every woodland entry point. Our dancing staved off the squash for a while until we were eventually thrust from the Toil Trees having pleased our ears, our eyes and our feet. Thank you Blissy!

We then ended up in the awesome and flamboyant tits out, anything goes, Gay Paris. An interesting compact and bijou indoor dance floor with a beautiful outside veranda around a large tree trunk. No idea by this time who was on and what time it was, but truly everywhere you go at Beatherder you can find the right kind of music and the right kind of beat. Anything from electro-swing, to hard core psyche trance, R&B to funk and soul and the obligatory disco. Its got it all and at least a few versions of it, at that!

Sunday was a game of two half’s. 

The second half we were back in the festival arena enjoying ourselves. The first half we were comatose. Which is festival language for professionally recovering enough to embrace the third day of at least a 12 hour shift of necessitating dance moves and groves and adventurous foot stomping. And...the sun was shining! It was bliss.

Our favourite time spent in the sunshine was up the far end of the site on the Lazy Meadow. Not just for its chilled ambience and acoustic vibes but also the entertainment frequenting the stone circle field and the adult reinforced playground rides. Our favourite was the See Saw, which really did amuse us for hours on end. We have the bruises to prove it!

The field decor was gorgeous and there was so much to sit and play on. Jump over and hide behind. It felt like a big kids (adult) place to play. And we were not the only ones by far.

So while the sun was in play, enjoying hours in the meadow just whiled away, smiling and laughing all the way.

Sunday finale, High Contrast who were amazing, bass filled brilliance. They finished just in time for us to dash across the field and catch the grand final number on the main stage from the Dub Pistols – Mucky Weekend. And so it was and so it always shall be.

Cant wait to go next year and see what the letter E will bring to the costume delights of the most jam packed, fun filled Lancaster hot pot of a weekend. Its big, bold, brilliant and unbelievably beastly. 

Words by - Lou Hyland

Photos courtesy of Beatherder Festival