Gentlemen of the Road

Ok so I am recently back from my summer holiday, an immense three weeks where I got up to all sorts of fun and just generally loved life. This whole holiday all began with a music festival called "Gentlemen of the Road" in a beautiful English country town near Brighton called Lewes. Now I this was a very small festival of around 50,000 people attending and only around half of those actually camping. To provide some perspective I believe Reading and Leeds festivals around around double this and Glastonbury is about three times the size with about 150,000 people camping.

This festival first caught my eye a little before tickets were announced as I heard it was being put together and headlined by Mumford and sons, one of my favourite, if not my favourite band at the moment. I first saw them in 2009 at another small country festival in Kent where they completely stole the show for me with there stage presence, passion and of course immense music, I've been a big fan ever since. After first hearing about it I proceeded to forget all about it until the morning tickets were going on sale. I got to work at 8am and then saw something about it online and decided on the spot that I MUST go. I had 4 hours before tickets went on sale and I instantly started calling a load of friends in England to get involved. All being the legends they are everyone instantly jumped on board and somehow found the money right then and there. In what turned out to be a great bit of luck through miss communication we ended up with almost twice as many tickets as we needed and this allowed more friends later to jump on board and we ended up with party of 11 to hit this festival. Part of this party was my Mum and her Husband Dave, now some may say that they would never take a parent to a festival but I stand by the fact it was an awesome idea. Like most festivals this one was full of people from 15 to 60 and as far as I could tell they had a fantastic time. Sure they didn't take part in the drinking games and didn't scramble to the front for the music, but music festivals are about more than that and I was really glad they came.

Now I would call myself a relatively experienced music festival goer having been to 5 previously and this one is undoubtedly as good as any other. The relatively small attendance and the setting of this idyllic old English town made for a fantastic atmosphere with everyone pretty chilled but having a fantastic time. I could write a whole post on the town of Lewes, only 15 minutes from Brighton this oldy worldy town is a little gem with views of rolling green hills in every direction and the high street full of cosy independent stores and pubs. I could definitely retire to a town like this. Each morning feeling very hot, tired and a little hungover we would slowly wonder into town for a bite to eat and from what I heard the locals seemed to love the atmosphere the festival had brought to the town, a lovely change from the usual destruction you see of some towns during festivals and the scorn shown by the locals.

To the main order of the day though, the music. The headline acts were Vampire Weekend and Mumford and sons with other acts including Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Witt, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic zeroes and many others (although not all with names so long). Apart from Johnny Flynn (who I am a huge fan of but gave a very short set neglecting many of his classics for fairly unexciting new material) everyone was fantastic. Mumford were as always, out of this world unsurprisingly and anyone who as ever enjoyed a single song of theirs I urge to go experience them live. Their passion and skill on stage is almost unparallelled by the many acts I've seen and there talent is matched only by there humbleness. The wild card of the weekend for me was Edward Sharpe, an act I had heard a little before the festival but I wasn't very knowledgeable of bu for me easily take second place for the weekend giving an awesome lively and engaging set full of fun and energy.

All in all it was a fantastic experienced made even more special by all the friends I was able to experience it with. Not only that, the organisation of this festival little weekend laid the foundations for what became our three week vacation . . . . .

Meet our party. My brother had the idea of the whole group wearing bandannas and sunglasses which turned out to be a great plan as it was the perfect situation. Originally each person was to chose a colour and wear a matching set however after the creator of the idea (my brother) forgot his own bandanna and making that impossible, we all decided to mix it up, which in the end I think was much better anyway.

A snippet from the local paper, a photographer wondered around the campsite for ages taking pictures and looked like he hit the jackpot when he found our very cool group.

A rig in the arena area, this was towards the end of the festival, don't believe that sky, for most of the weekend the weather was crazy hot!

The Stage