Truck was the festival I had been waiting for this year. With Glastonbury came hours of wandering the elaborate festival city following the trail of the 160,000 strong crowd, Henley a short burst of high brow entertainment, and Wireless a heavily commercialised A-list line up.

Truck was an affordable, entertaining, localised and family friendly day out. With tickets around the £70 mark for the full weekend, there’s no need to break the bank, and as you can bring in your own food and drink you could hold back from spending over the course of the weekend. For the less organised amongst us, 4 lagers only set you back £10, and a fresh and fruity cocktail £5. There was also a noticeable uptake of reasonably priced memorabilia with children and parents proudly sporting their Truck t-shirts and hoodies.  

One of the most endearing parts of Truck was the attention to detail throughout the small but intimate site. Your typical festival bar was replaced with a ‘Beach Bar’ kitted out with deck chairs, sand, inflatable palm trees, bunting and a bamboo clad service area. Traditional festival food was similarly tossed aside in favour of local charities, allowing you to extract the guilt from a pizza knowing the proceeds would go to the nearby rotary club, or enjoy a steak sandwich appreciating the locally sourced meat and funding invested back into farming. During such a warm weekend, the fresh salads and cold sushi also became very attractive.

Our favourite venue for the weekend was most definitely the Saloon Bar; a new addition to Truck that certainly went down well with the crowd. The swinging saloon doors always seemed to lead the way to a packed crowd (if you could get through them), and a great act. Our favourites of the weekends were Friday’s headliner ‘The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band’ and the weekend’s hidden gem ‘Siblings’. Having entered the site bright and early on the Saturday morning, ‘Siblings’ performance was hugely popular with the crowd, highlighted by the queue for albums and t-shirts at the end of their performance. The set comprised a great mix of upbeat and mellow tunes, their beautiful vocal harmonies and cool mandolin backing providing the ideal summer festival wake up call.  

Next door on the Market Stage, Oxford’s own Lewis Watson performed to a packed home crowd. While Watson may have been taken aback by his recent tweet from Geri Halliwell, it’s no surprise that this singer-songwriter has taken the globe by storm, the audience loving every minute of his crisp, open and honest performance. Lewis Watson is all over the UK festival circuit this summer and definitely one to watch.  

Of the bigger names on the main stage, Ash proved the greatest draw, bringing the crowd to their feet with the full repertoire of classic hits, giving us a reminder of their success over the last 15 years.

The weekend’s camping was a relaxed experience, with plenty of space for arrivals on Friday morning and well into the afternoon. Refreshingly close to both the car park and the action, this served as a reminder to the camping-cynics that festivals don’t have to be punctuated with treacherous mile-long walks through the mud with a tent, novelty gazebo and warm crate of lager.

The set-up was well suited to families with small children and it was great to see that the organisers had done such a good job taking this on board: the ‘crash-landing’ of the monsters UFO into the main stage on the Saturday afternoon being a noteable highlight for the children on site.

All in all the perfect summer festival: intimate, relaxing, bursting with great new music, great venues, green, family-friendly and supportive of local charities and business. See you next year Truck. 

Article by: Claire Game