Standon Calling Review, Pictures and The Good & Bad

2019 marks the 4th year of us going to the family festival Standon Calling. We have seen some brilliant music from George Ezra to Jess Glynne to Paloma Faith. Add in a bit of Blossoms before they made it big, Kelis and Bryan Ferry. The music acts are always great.

Add into the mix an amazing well being area, the best food, comedy, a dog show, karaoke glitter. A brilliant back stage area for charging my phone and a cleaner toilet;-) I cover the event every year for Mrs Mummypenny and now my podcast, so we are properly excited so return. Highlight acts being CHIC!! and Rag N Bone Man. I wonder who I will get to interview this year, last year it was the mostest lovely Hollie Cook.

Changes this year see the festival becoming more greener and environmental. Plastic use will be minimal, everyone must take reusable bottles or buy one when there for water. Everyone camps but this year we are not. it was beyond stressful in 2018, trying to put up a tent in rock solid ground, and then it falling down in the overnight storm, whilst we were in it.

This year we are booking a tent from Camplight, who will put up a tent for us. A recycled tentat that. And it will have blow-up beds included too. So this means all we need to take is sleeping bags, check got them thanks to Aldi in 2017. Maybe borrow a foldaway table and chairs from my neighbour. And we had best take some food.

Here is my post from 2016 which is super popular on google, giving you everything you need to know about the festival, updated for what I learnt in 2017 and 2018 too!

Festivals are fairly new to me!

I had always wanted to go to a festival for years, I would watch Glastonbury, V festival longingly every year on TV but never did anything about it.  The fear of the unknown and camping had maybe put me off but I wrote my #40thingsb440 list and included festival and camping as things I wanted to do. And in 2016 I got the chance before my 40th birthday, I was very excited to be contacted and asked to go to Standon Calling festival. And to experience it as a family so here is my Standon Calling review.

Packing for 2 days Camping/Festival Life

So off we went on the last Friday of July with a car packed to the bursting point of stuff for camping and festival life. Lovely Mrs Mummypenny readers (thank you Gem, Sarah, Natalie x2, Shelly, Laura, Andy) offered lots of advice on tips and tricks and what to take, which enabled me to write this post last week of our packing list. We were very well prepared.

The BEST Bits

The atmosphere. Standon Calling in a smallish festival around 30 minutes drive from my home near Ware in Hertfordshire. Despite the small festival point, the headline acts were Jess Glynne, Suede, and Kelis back in 2016! Everyone was super friendly, chilled, chatty, smiley. It felt really safe. It almost felt like an alternative universe where there was none of the nastiness of the world today. From the security staff to the catering staff to the acts to the PR guys, everyone was lovely.

The food

There was vegan, pizza, smoothies, burgers, ice-cream vans, waffles, cake shop, coffee shops. You name it they had it. Even a pop up sit down restaurant. A great selection of food to keep all members of the family happy. For dinner, on Saturday there were 3 of us eating. I had ribeye in brioche from Le Bun, Dylan had a beautiful burger and Josh had bacon, egg muffin bap. From 3 different places and everyone was happy.

The music

I loved the bands and you got to be really close to the stage. On Friday night we were front row for Suede. At one point Brett Anderson climbed into the crowd and stood like 50 cm away from Dylan and I and sang. It was a surreal experience that we both really enjoyed. I really liked Everything Everything on Saturday, and the Hives put on a great show before Suede on the Friday night, although they were a bit shouty. Jess Glynne sounded amazing but at 10:15 start time on Saturday the boys couldn’t keep their eyes open and were shivering so we had to retreat to the tent…slightly gutted about that.

The pool

The festival is held on the grounds of the Lordship of Standon and part of the festival is in his garden and pool. It was very safe with limits on the number of people in the pool and 2 lifeguards at all times. The boys all loved the pool, really loved it. The queues were annoying, but hey you could sit and chill in the queue whilst the boys ran around playing football/making friends.

The fancy dress

I wasn’t quite prepared for this. I had brought suitable festival wear. Summer hippy style dresses etc but that was it. So I got glittered up with Go Get Glitter. If you see them at a festival ( I know they will be at Reading) do pop along and get glittered up. And there were face-painting/hairdos galore.  Everywhere you looked people looked so cool from pirates to mermaids to jellyfish to sea monsters. You name it, it was there. The boys and I had fun playing spot Nemo.

The theme changes every year, for 2019 we will be prepared with the right fancy dress gear, and glitter obviously.

The camping

The boys loved it. The adventure, the sleeping arrangements. All the gifted stuff we got from Aldi from sleeping bags (£19.99) to the hammock (£29.99) to blow up sofa (£19.99) to rucksacks to lights. Thank you so much, Aldi. We can confirm all items sent were extremely useful, brilliant value and easy to set up. The hammock provided much campsite jealousy. And a place for me to have an afternoon nap on Saturday and a place to sleep on the sat night. We borrowed a cool blow up tent from friends. No poles, just inflatable bits.

But I really would recommend the Camplight service. Putting up a tent in 2018 was too much, a task I will never repeat. This year I pay for someone to put up a tent for me.

Entertainment for children.

There was an amazing children’s area where there were circus skills, walking the plank, street dance, face-painting. The boys spent hours there. All 3 loved it. There were a big wheel and big merry-go-round ride.

The well-being area is amazing with wooden spa tubs yoga, nice showers and a sauna! It is worth paying the extra for access to this over the weekend.

The weather

Apart from a brief downpour in the middle of the Friday night (which did leak into the tent), it was a beautiful weekend with sun and warmth. There was no mud, flipflops were fine:-) This was the weather in 2016. But 2018 was different and it did affect the enjoyment. Friday was sunny, then the heavens opened after two whole months of no rain. And it didnt stop for about 24 hours. Wellies were a must.

The Bad Bits

Life is all about balance and of course not everything was going to be perfect..so here are the bits that we didn’t like.

Camping

I’ve read lots of stuff about camping, so was prepared for it to be a challenge. From the carrying of stuff from car to pitch (which wasn’t even that far as we had special press parking tickets). The putting up of the tent, apparently the tent pegs were not strong enough. Camping is hardcore,especially if you intend to put up a tent.

The Cost of Stuff at the Festival

We spent around £250 from Friday afternoon to Sunday lunchtime. Everything you bought was expensive. The food was maybe £8 per burger. Coffee was £3. Ice creams were £3. Water was £2. A pint of beer was £5. Fairground rides were £3 a go. We didn’t budget,  we just spent as we wanted and therefore spent a lot.

We had however received the tickets free of charge (full weekend camping tickets for 2 adults and 2 children would have been £300, an infant was only £5) and the camping stuff was gifted by Aldi (cost of around £150). So we actually had a great weekend for £250, we would have spent more at Haven. They had a great cashless wristband thing which reduced queues, but also made you think less about the cost of things and therefore spend more.

The Queues for the Pool.

Luckily we got to the pool as soon as it opened Saturday and Sunday mornings and only had to wait 1 hour to get in. But if you joined at 10 am on a Sunday morning you would have been waiting for 2-3 hours to get into the pool for your 30-minute slot. Not great, but it was very popular. And no one was annoyed about the queues, just chilled out and relaxed!

The Toilets

Okay, so I was expecting these to be bad. And they weren’t as bad as they could have been. They were proper toilets with loo roll. But they were smelly and by the afternoon and def evening, they were not nice. Dirty/stinky. The cleaning staff did a great job at getting them cleaned up in the mornings, not a nice job for them.

Food

We could have been better-prepared food wise. We did take a good supply of Aldi snacks, sausage rolls, crisps, chocolate, fruit, water, beer, cider. But not enough of the right stuff, as the temptation of the food stalls was far more. Lots of people had camping stoves and were boiling up water for tea and cooking bacon. We had none of that. And probably spent £60 on breakfast food!

I went on a sugar rampage on Saturday and ate a huge slice of chocolate cake. This was a huge mistake after eating clean for 5 weeks. The sugar hangover on Sunday was the worst ever and actually lasted 48 hours. Not great when we were flying to Spain very early on Monday morning. 48 hours of migraine painkillers were the only solution. And I have learned that having a huge slice of chocolate cake is so not worth it.

Overall

We loved it a lot more than the bad bits. Particularly me and the 2 eldest boys Dylan and Josh. We will absolutely be back, but maybe glamping;-)

There are still tickets left for Standon Calling this year, head on over to the website for weekend and day tickets.

The PR team behind Standon Calling have kindly gifted me tickets for the 2019 festival. A huge thank you to Zeitgeist and the two Jamie’s:-)

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