Following on from the huge success of Sex & Bugs &
Rock ‘n Roll in 2013 the BES Roadies returned with our beautiful blue tent to
Cheltenham Race course in May for Wychwood 2014. This years' BES Roadies team
saw the return of Sarah, Catherine, Iain and Kate, and first-time Roadies
Eduardo, John, Matt and Phil.
For the Lancaster-based Roadies, the weekend started with a
journey in a moderately packed car with our famous bees safely between
Eduardo’s legs (he is the bees knees!). En route we stopped off for a romantic
picnic at the picturesque Frankley services before arriving at a rather muddy
festival site!
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| Setting up before the rain hit |
Thankfully, we got both the blue tent, located in the new
lush Green area of the festival and our ‘palace’ of a sleeping tent up before
the monsoon weather set in. Somehow the only things to get wet in the process
were the entire contents of John’s bag (oops)!
Luckily, the rain stopped overnight and after a quick run
through on Friday morning we were ready to go with our activities, giveaways
and busks, including the new posters and ladybird game, alongside the old
favourites #poogame, bug hunts, bees and swabbing. We had a great first
afternoon in the tent with so many visitors it was a struggle to get out
of the tent at the end of the day. Once we managed to get away we
went back to the ‘palace’ for a debrief before heading back to the festival
site for food, The Real Thing and The Stranglers followed by a bit of Headphone
Disco.
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| Aphid fishing |
Over the weekend we had hundreds of keen visitors to our
stall to try out the poogame, find out how gross their festival kit is and see our bees. We also had special appearances from La Cucaracha (The
Cockroach) and the Ladybird, although it was a little bit too hot to wear these
costumes all weekend!
As with last year, we had several regular visits over the
weekend from particularly enthusiastic kids who didn’t want to stop bug hunting
or chatting about ecology. One boy in particular had to be pulled away from Matt
by his parents when we were enjoying dinner on the Saturday evening whilst
asking "Are you having dinner in the same place tomorrow?"
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| Busy times at the stall |
A highlight for us was dancing at Craig Charles’ funk and
soul DJ set on Sunday, after which Phil and Sarah were lucky enough to meet
him backstage! Other highlights included spending our evenings in the Comedy Tent,
especially the audience participation, and Matt’s extraordinary appearance as
‘The Scorpion’.
With The Boomtown Rats headlining the festival, we were half
expecting Sir Bob to rush over to the BES stall, slam his fists on the bee hive
bench, and shout “Give us your honey, NOW” (like at Live Aid), Needless to say,
he did not, and we didn’t succeed in our
attempts to Swab Geldof.
The festival came to an end with an early start on Monday
morning before the long journey back up to Lancaster, with us both playing the
role of the sleeping children in the back of the car, with Eduardo keeping John
company in the front!
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| Roadies relax at the headphone disco Clockwise from top left: Eduardo, Iain, Phil, Kate, Sarah, Catherine |
All in all, another great weekend for the BES Roadies!
Post by Phil and Catherine
