Boardmasters has one of the most beautiful settings

Boardmasters 2015

Wednesday 5th to Sunday 9th August 2015
Watergate Bay, Newquay, Cornwall, TR8 4AN, England MAP
4 days £119 with camping

Daily capacity: 30,000

After a very late night, we arose after mid day, after taking one look at the sky, it was quite clear to see we had not missed a great deal, with rain clouds rolling in and a nasty wind it looked like the day could be a write off. Being the last day we nipped down the Fistral to have one last paddle in the sea no mater how rough. It seemed I had put a hex on the glorious weather, I had been asking for 2 days for a decent swell on the ocean and bigger waves, and it seemed Poseidon had answered my calls!

The waves were crashing onto the beach, and the surf was wild, this was more like the exciting visual treat I had in my head, if only the sea had been like this all weekend! But, as I said, this was at the expense of the glorious sunshine, a double edged sword.

We stayed for about an hour watching the surfers, before driving up to the second site.

Prides were rocking the main stage as we entered. The 3 piece were one of my favourite acts of the weekend, with a nice mix of cutting edge electro sounds filling the air. I couldn't help but wish they had been playing on the previous days bill in the sunshine. Even the rain and howling winds couldn't even dampen their performance.

Following Prides onto the main stage was Lucy Rose, a true rising star of the British indie scene, with lots of notable success coming in soundtracks to many youth culture series. She has a growing fan base who don't even know it yet, with familiar tracks, they just cant remember where they have heard them a lot of the time. Yet another brilliant set, which again would of benefited from better weather.

I suppose this could be said of many a British festival, but Boardmasters truly is one of the most beautiful settings and given good weather you would really struggle to beat it, however if the weather does change, the positioning does leave it vulnerable to the elements.

I decided to find some inside entertainment to try and dry off a little, and found the Keg & Pasty stage. Looking from the outside like a year round pub, this was a stage built to house a variety of performance, and on the mic at the time we stumbled in was Kernow King. The local comic was performing some very close to the bone localized comedy, which I really enjoyed.

Every festival I attend I like to pick a completely random name from the line up and go and see what they are like this time it fell to Rebecca Clements, a local girl performing on the view stage. With the bad weather taking hold, I did feel a little sorry for her performing on this exposed stage, and she had a couple of good tracks including a nice cover of the Cure's 'Boys Don't Cry'.

Approaching half past 6 we decided that we would watch Arrested Development on the main stage before making a move home. With a 6 hour drive home and work at 6am Monday morning, unfortunately this plan didn't come to fruition, as unbeknown to us Arrested Development had not been able to make it to the festival.Apparently their plane had been grounded in Germany earlier in the day. A big let down but these things cant be helped I suppose.

So with a heavy heart we decided to cut our loses before the heavens truly opened to start the long journey home. Luckily for us less than 5 minutes after being in the car a rainstorm of biblical proportions came in, and I did feel a little smug that I didn't have to drive home soaked to the bone. As it happens we got stuck in traffic after an accident and ended up taking a little longer than planned, but that didn't dampen my love for Boardmasters at all!

All in all a brilliant mid sized festival, beautiful location, great service and staff and no pressure or stress! same again next year please.

review by: Jamie Licence

photos by: Jamie Licence / Tor Jones