the G card mars an otherwise terrific beautiful day at Galtres Parklands Festival

Galtres Parklands Festival 2014

Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th August 2014
Duncombe Park, Helmsley, York, North Yorkshire, YO62 5EB, England MAP
£95, child (5-15) £40 family (2a + 3c) £285

Daily capacity: 10,000

This is our first trip out to local festival Galtres Parklands Festival, despite it being only up the road. Nestled in the grounds of Duncombe Park, this small but well-formed festival has is celebrating its tenth year this year. It started as predominantly a real ale festival with a bit of music thorn in, and today the real ale is still about and the music has stepped up. Over the weekend there’s music from local bands like Rat Catchers Mallets, Paul Staines and The Y Street Band, to the diverse selection of headliners; Levellers, Tricky, and The Human League.

The site is clearly signposted, and not too bad of a route from the A1, though there is a precarious moment where we try and get a classic mini up the steep slopes at Sutton Bank! I wouldn’t like to tow a caravan up there. Once at the site it’s straight onto the car park, and the camping is at the other side of the road, a mere couple of minutes’ walk. Those in campervans are in the field to the side. There is Riverside camping for the families, further up, but we never made it up there due to lack of time; we only went to the festival on a Friday ticket.

There is a long queue near the entrance, so we join it. Turns out people are talking about something called a G Card, which is like another language to us, we have never heard of it. We queue for nearly an hour and get our tickets from the box office. We ask to get a G card, we are told to get one from the offices in the arena as they are trying to shorten the queue. It opens at 3pm, and its 2.30pm now. Fair enough.

We put the tent up, having chosen a space (there is lots of camping room here, a rare thing at festivals these days). We wandered into the arena, again only a minute’s stroll from the campsite. Here we were confronted by huge queues to get a card, at all the offices. We waited in two queues, one to be told we could only activate the G card there, so had to queue for an hour to pay for a G card to then activate it and then put money onto it. No one knew what was going on, and many people on the site are fed up, you can tell.

Apologies for the long moan but seeing as we waited 3 hours to get a card we missed a lot of bands so the review is quite short. We could not help this. The G card it seems is the only way to pay for anything on site. Legal tender does not work. It costs £1 for the card, then £2 every time you put money onto it. Having no prior knowledge of this payment system and no idea it would be here, we had no choice to queue to get a card. All payments were on this card, food, drink, merchandise, even sweets. We like to sample festival food so had not eaten before setting off, and were starving after waiting for hours just to get food. The website does not make a huge deal of it and you have to search for it under “Finance and Money”. Not a likely title to have as part of a festival info website.

Needless to say this really put a downer on the day. I have no doubt once set up this may be a good idea, but I have no idea where any left over money on the cards goes, and the fact that you cannot top up the card after midnight means those of us there for a day are essentially screwed (the bars do not shut until 2-3am). I personally would like to know why they have this scheme (the argument that is it to attract local traders as they earn more money as a percentage of sales rather than paying a flat fee to be there) but thinking for a 10,000 capacity, not taking into account lost cards and further top ups; that’s £10,000 on cards and £20,000 on the first top up alone… someone’s raking it in.

So after all the queuing and heading straight for food, from a little curry place that was ok but a rip off again at £7 for a small wrap, it’s time to actually have a look about. The main stage is the Duke stage. This is named after the Grand Old Duke of York, as the festival was born on Crayke Hill ten years ago, and this is where the Duke marched his men up and down. The outdoor stage is surrounded by hay bales and there’s a good view from all points. The Oxman stage is the smaller outdoor stage, named after the festivals logo character.

The Black Howl is named after the wood to the side of today’s festival site. It is a black tent which hosts BBC unsigned on the Friday, Saturday Sessions the next day and then Sundown Sessions on the Sunday. The Little Big Top is another tent showcasing young talent, and at night becomes a cinema, silent disco and comedy club.

The emphasis on it being a beer festival is pronounced as there are two stages in two of the bars. The Ryedale Artsbar has sofas around a stage featuring all the best from the local Ryedale area, along with the best beers! The price is £3.50 a pint of £2 per half, all around the site. The Firkin Stage is also a bar that plays host to open mic and acoustic acts, and again most ale.

To the side of the main site, away from the fairground dodgems, waltzers and the best inflatable slide area I have ever seen (Simpsons themed) is the kids area. This festival, for all its beer and ale selections, is also huge on families, hence its own camping area. Here in the Tall Trees Island, amongst the trees are Snapping Turtle, a place for storytelling and spoken word, and the Crafty Crayfish for arts and crafts. The Galleon is a huge ship that shines blue late at night and is the backdrop for theatre and stomping music. There are deckchairs scattered all around the site, a paddling pool and even some donkeys, as the theme is Seaside, although on the Friday I do not see many fancy-dressed people. There are also walkabouts by the Magic Ball Man, The Moaning Lisa and The Keystone Cops amongst many more. The Magic Ball Man actually keeps us entertained in the G card queue; this one is situated next to the busking shop, like a bus stop. Can’t pay for that on the G card can we?

There’s a chance each day to do some firewalking, but unfortunately we miss it. There is a campfire area in the Tall Trees space when most of the children have gone to bed. We briefly catch the Four Shadows Theatre acting Hans Christian Andersons ‘The Red Shoes’ outside the Galleon on the way to the queues, then after that quickly catch people dancing to the bass driven reggae sounds of Hull’s The Talks on the Duke. The rain forces us into a tent for a minute and we catch …And The Hangnails , an interesting two piece punk band from York that are ripping up the Black Howl; for a family festival there is a lot of mouth fouling (not that I’m bothered). We stroll on over to watch Bellowhead get the crowd dancing on the Duke, and they reward us with songs like ‘Gosport Nancy’, ‘Sloe Gin Set’ ‘Rosemary Lane’ (a take on ‘Strawberry Fields’), and the great ‘New York Girls’. We then wander by the Oxman stage on the recommendations of the main stag compare to see The Hot Sprockets, a band from a bit further afield (Dublin), playing bluesy country and bluegrass.

Hello Operator from York have more blues for us but it’s a lot more fuzzy and surrounded by desert rock. The folks in the Black Howl are settling in amongst the hail bails, but it’s time for us to move back to the Duke for the headline set from the Levellers.

Levellers: The Galtres Parklands Festival 2014

The site is easy to navigate, as in its small enough, but there is buggar all lighting in the arena, and it’s hard to see anything at all when away from a stage or stall. Playing for just over hour the Levellers have a hit filled set including ‘Battle Of The Beanfield’, ‘Fifteen Years’, ‘One Way’, ‘Dirty Davey’, ‘Riverflow’ and a great encore hand-swaying version of ‘The Devil Went Down To Georgia’. There’s a couple of teens in the pit who are invited to dance in front of the stage and do very well. After all that fun we head over to see Blackbeard's Tea Party on a few recommendations, but maybe straight after The Levellers was pushing it a bit. They are a good tight band but we are suffering from not eating much all day, so finally manage to find the food area in the middle of the festival, and enjoy a Mexican wrap and fish and chips, whilst listening to someone we thought was an act but it turns out was just semi-talented kids on the open mic piano situated under the food market tent. Our piano skills did not go down as well…

Heading back to spend the last of our G card money (which was about £2.30, sod putting any more on) we find out we could not top it up again as it was after midnight. So after one half pint we are screwed until the Saturday, and we will not be topping up just for breakfast before we leave. The festival are losing out on money from day ticket folks who may be camping, or just folks in general who have not topped up enough. That half pint lasts us for a small while while we dance in the Little Top to the silent disco, which is just quieter than normal, there are no headphones, so the likes of ‘Jolene’ and ‘Loveshack’ are quiet outside the tent but loud enough to boogie on the inside. After that and with the prospect of more beer a no no, and with the campfire now just embers we stroll the very short stroll back to the tent.

I would recommend this place for the festival itself, the layout is great, ease of access things to do are great, and what a choice of ale! However if they continue to use the G card next year I will not look to go again, as it completely ruined our day. People are saying they were great when set up, but I do not like paying to spend money, so the continual top up fees (I would not put loads of money on the card in one go as I doubt you can get the money back off) are not for me. Also the arena needs more lighting, I’m sure there are environmentally friendly ways of lighting up a site for 3 days. I like the plastic cup idea, so you use the same cup all weekend for £1.50, which meant litter was hardly an issue, but there should have been more bins around the site, especially where food vendors were located away from the food market area. All in all mainly sort the G card out and I’d return.