Farmer Phil's Festival is an ideal party finish to a beautiful week in Shropshire

Farmer Phil's Festival 2016

Friday 12th to Sunday 14th August 2016
near Gatten Farm, Ratlinghope, Shropshire, SY5 0SN, England MAP
£75 weekend ticket including camping

Daily capacity: 2,000

You can learn a lot about a festival from a morning mooch around the campsite, listening as you go. You might hear talk of music, of drinking, of dancing; talk possibly of eating and definitely of drinking. Farmer Phil’s campsite is a bit different though, for if you keep an ear open, you’ll often hear talk of walking and rambling, perhaps illustrated by a broad sweep of the arm illustrating the beautiful hillside landscape that surrounds the valley of the festival site.

Farmer Phil’s festival is situated, on a farm, in a beautiful valley in Shropshire, just below the Stiperstones National Nature Reserve. You can walk to it from the festival site. Or you can go in the opposite direction, and stroll in an old school way to the local pub. The festival opens on a Sunday but the campsite, with all the usual facilities, opens the previous Monday, so you can get a full week’s camping holiday in Shropshire for the price of a festival ticket, and of course, a music festival at the end of the week.

So the location and the longevity might explain the ramblers, but there are also plenty of young families here too. There’s a dedicated programme of children activities including an exotic zoo, circus skills, an arts and crafts programme and a big steampunk rhino for them to climb on.

The main stage at Farmer Phil’s is in its own natural amphitheatre. It’s a bring your own chair affair, and this year there’s talk that it’s the biggest one yet, attendance wise. Perhaps this is why some of the facilities are missing bog roll and hand wash; best bring your own, I reckon. But the real upshot of this is that although Farmer Phil’s is at the small end of the festival spectrum, it’s surprisingly easy to get lost or separated on the festival site. There’s not much in the way of signal on the site so you need to resort to pre-arranged meeting places in the event of getting separated. It’s been a few years for me since I last did that, I can tell you, and I recommend the bar.

This year, we are lucky to have a sunny week for the Farmer Phil’s, and there’s an ever present dust cloud in front of the stage which hints at the party atmosphere on offer. Folks put their chairs down, drink their beers, and party away from morning until midnight. One of the benefits of a festival this size is that the beer tent is no more than a short stroll from the main stage, so you don’t really miss anything, even if you wander off mid-set. Food wise too, from crepes to caribbean, there’s plenty to choose from.

The intense party atmosphere is the result, in no small part, of the quality of the acts that are booked here. Black Thorn is the my festival discovery, rounding off Friday night on the second stage in fine folky style. The Selecter sum up the mood perfectly on the main stage, responding to the sweet smell in the air by playing a medley around My Sweet Collie. There’s plenty of dust kicked up for The Endings on Saturday. They are followed by Gaz Brookfield who proves to be a real favourite. Dreadzone round things off on Saturday night. It’s quite a short set, still everyone’s having a good time. On Sunday I am lured into a blue circus tent by a bloke playing a bluesy Seven Nation Army on a sitar. It turns out to be Paul Jackson, and who’d have thought that’d work, but it does and turns out to be a bit of a highlight.

It’s clear from the crowds here that Farmer Phil’s is a popular festival and is on the up. The downside of that popularity is that this year, bringing your own bog roll and hand wash was a good idea, but that is something easily fixed for next year. What you get at Farmer Phil’s is week long, incredibly cheap camping holiday in a beautiful part of the world, rounded off by a right old party of a festival in the final three days. And that can’t be bad.