Rock & Bike Fest ticks all of the right boxes

This year's Rock and Bike Festival had moved to a new location. Stanford Hall Estate in Loughborough had the privilege of hosting this year's event.

In comparison to last year's site, this site felt a lot more spacious and had the historical picturesque Stanford Hall as the backdrop towering over the main stage. Due to being on the grounds, it also enabled punters to go and look at the deer and other animals roaming around whilst walking to and from the campsite.

On the grand scale of things, Rock and Bike festival is hardly going to make other well established festivals start to worry about losing their fans. However regardless of size, this festival has got all the fundamental ingredients required to ensure that each year it steadily grows and hopefully becomes a big part of the Festival calendar.

It's the little things that make a huge difference, such as being able to park your bike/car near to where you set up your tent in the campsite. You could have a barbecue (if being used appropriately) and didn't have to walk miles to get from the campsite to the main arena. It was a refreshing change to have Security people who weren't trying to be little Hitlers. Most importantly food and drink stalls which don't force you to remortgage your house to have a bite to eat. Rock and Bike Festival excels at all of these things and I imagine it is why they are slowly expanding year after year.

So as per usual this year the festival had a wonderful family feel to it, with a laid back feel which made you feel welcome and not like a prisoner, unlike some other festivals I could mention.

This year had a few more activities for children including a tug of war and fancy dress competition (Pirate themed). There was also a workshop where children could learn circus skills and pass the time whilst waiting for bands to set up.

The campsite this year was more than ample for people wishing to camp, and there was even enough space to accommodate people who decided to turn up on the day and wished to purchase a camping ticket. There was plenty of space between each tent, which made a refreshing change from festivals like Leeds where three tents are usually squeezed into a space barely big enough for just one tent.

This year's event was headlined by The Quireboys, New Model Army. However the rest of the music was provided by tribute bands. Now usually I do get very bored very quickly when listening to bands playing cover versions or trying to imitate big named artistes. Luckily though the production team at Rock and Bike Festival seem to do a good job in finding tribute acts which are entertaining to watch and listen to.

Other bands on the bill included A Foreigners Journey (Journey and Foreigner tribute), and Rebel Rebels (David Bowie Tribute), and Rammlied (Rammstein Tribute), as well as Aynt Skynyrd (Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute). All provided the fans with a whole weekend of great music.

A band called Stone, made a welcome return to the festival and even had a special guest (Toyah Wilcox) sing a couple of songs with them.

In-between the music there was plenty of other things to keep people entertained, the traditional Custom bike and trike show, and a fancy dress costume competition which this year was Pirate themed. There was also a Tattoo competition. All of these events were fun and made the festival feel like a wholesome family festival.

For me, my personal highlight was the Rammstein Tribute act called Rammlied. Admittedly the stage theatrics will never be as good as the real Rammstein due to health and safety and other legal restrictions using pyrotechnics and flame throwers etc. However Rammlied have got the music down to a fine art and even though this music was possibly to 'heavy' or 'industrial' for some of the audience members. Fans of Rammstein certainly weren't disappointed with this tribute act.

Friday night headliners were The Quireboys; their set covered a good range of their back catalogue as well as some new material. Watching this band took me back to my younger days especially when they played 'Hey You' and '7 O'Clock'. To be honest I would have paid the ticket price for the festival just to see these- all of the other bands were just a pleasant bonus!

Saturday headliners New Model Army were a great choice for a headliner; although it is still hard to believe that they are still going after all of these years. New Model Army are one of those bands that I've never really cared for. But I must have been in a minority as just about every man and his dog seemed to worship this band. To be fair to the band, they know all of the right buttons to press to keep their fans happy.

The only downside to this festival for me, is absolutely no fault of the organisers, but the fish and chip stall sold me fish that was definitely not cooked, and yet when I returned it they refused to do anything about it. Which was a shame as all the rest of the food on site was rather tasty especially the Ghurka Curry stall in the main arena.

This festival ticks all of the right boxes for me - great atmosphere, fantastic music, lots of entertainment, spacious campsites, and friendly event staff/security people around.

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