Intro

The Wickerman Festival, held on a farm just outside Kirkcudbright, near Dumfries in Scotland has been around for four years now, and in that time has established a pretty good reputation for great acts, and a friendly atmosphere among some pretty fantastic surroundings. I've been keen to try it for myself now for a couple of years, but the fact that it may as well be on Mars it's so far from where I live had up to this year put me off. This year though, a killer lineup, and a forecast for some great weather had me wending my way North to find out if this reputation was deserved.

The campsite at Wickerman is open from 12 on Thursday, as is the arena, although the only thing open on the Thursday night is the beer tent. That said, it was absoloutely jumping, with good beer on tap at pretty much pub prices.

The site itself is big.... very big in fact. Space for camping was never ever going to be a problem, and there was always plenty of space to sit down and chill out for a while and watch the world go by. As you might expect, the setting for the festival really is something else, surrounded as it is with crags, pine woods and hills, not to mention the massive wicker man that overlooked the main arena (but more on him later).

Within the arena are no less than seven stages, from the outdoor Woodward and Summer Isle stages that alternated between the main festival acts, through to an acoustic stage, the Scooter Tent, providing Ska for the masses, the Axis sound system playing Reggae and the Rowan tent featuring World Music.

One big surprise was the strength of the Dance Music presence, with two tents - the Votan stage playing mainly Psy-Trance and the Eden Mystery tent featuring mainly house and breaks. There was also a BIG chillout tent playing ambient that got very popular late on. Kids were also well catered for with a Childrens area, and a pretty sizeable funfair.

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