overview

Set amongst the beautiful Belladrum Estate in Inverness-shire, the 2006 Belladrum Tartan Heart festival was all set for its biggest year – although not quite sold out, around 8,000 people each day arrived to enjoy a mix of entertainment and live music.

The estate really is a great venue for a festival, with breath-taking scenery surrounding the campsite and arena. It helps create an atmosphere that is very much family orientated, and children in their hundreds join the older festival goers for an entertaining couple of days.

What is to be commended is that the festival in no way patronises the children that arrive – there are no cheesy novelty pop acts, but there are little side attractions that would keep young children entertained – dance classes, puppetry and a whole host of performers to make it an eclectic weekend for everybody.

The line-up itself is very impressive, for being a mid sized festival there’s a mix of country, folk, pop, dance, and almost every style of music imaginable over the two days. Echo and the Bunnymen headline the Friday, Embrace the Saturday. The smaller stages such as the Seedlings tent showcase the best of new Scottish music, whilst the main stage (known as the Garden stage) not only provides some bigger bands such as Mystery Jets or the Automatic, but also allows up-and-coming bands to get a shot at an outdoor stage, such as The Hazy Janes or Camera Obscura.

Food and drink is well provided for, there are less burger vans than usual for other festivals, replaced with more local produce, such as local Scottish venison, hot Arbroath smokies, and even the beer and ale is locally produced, which gives the festival a non-commercial feel, but rather a showcase of what the Highlands have to offer.

One complaint of an otherwise marvellous festival is the organisation – on both days, some stages were running up to half an hour late, and figuring out when a band were due on stage was sometimes left down to guesswork, but this is an otherwise small glitch, as most people were not just there for the big bands, but to pick up some new music as well.

Despite being a fairly new festival, Tartan Heart has the promise to become a real highlight of the mid-sized festival calendar in the United Kingdom – it manages to combine a family atmosphere with a wide range of performers in some of the most beautiful countryside that Scotland has to offer, and is a welcome alternative to the larger events that the country is more famous for.

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