The Big Chill Day 1

Our reporter's blog with the latest from the Big Chill festival.

01 August 2008 - Our reporter Georgie Rogers has donned her wellies and waterproof gear and headed to the Big Chill festival near Hereford. She reports back with the latest from the site:

I finally arrived at The Big Chill at about 9.30pm, after a heap of traffic when leaving the big smoke, and was greeted by a spot of drizzle - but I found the 35,OOO strong crowd here in very high spirits already.

The rain shortly ceased, I didn’t even bother trying to find my friends’ campsite in the darkness so decided a night’s sleep in the car was the likely outcome and set off to hook up with my chums.

Set in the stunning grounds of Eastnor Castle, the site really is breathtaking. It is set along a lake which when lit up at night looks magical. Creatively it is a feast for the eyes, especially at night when everything comes alive.

There is so much to do here, the Victorian fun fair looks like a real treat which I am planning on checking out later on. Apparently there are traditionally dressed women wearing beards! There’s kids all over the place practicing their circus tricks, painting workshops and all sorts of activities to keep everyone entertained.

The atmosphere is great, whilst wandering the first night it has struck me that everyone here is really letting their hair down and going wild, which is something I hadn’t anticipated with it being called The Big Chill. I was very much mistaken, the chill aspect of the festival is just as strong as its counterpart – the party! It’s a really manageable size and even though the ages range from babies to 60 year olds, for the younger generation – it still remains one big party.

A leather shredded dress with this strange, beige oval mask hiding her face

On arrival I caught most of the former Moloko singer Roisin Murphy’s set on the main stage which was incredible. She’s got such stage presence and with several costume changes, she came alive on the stage.

One of the most interesting was, what I can only describe as - a leather shredded dress with this strange, beige oval mask hiding her face. She was working the stage and the title track from her second album Overpowered was a definite crowd pleaser. I was very impressed.

After this I went and watched The Orb, another great set. The mixture of retro with psychedelic visuals was mesmerising. The set was live and so they had a drummer, bassist on stage and I was blown away when they played a dubstep version of Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World. It went down a treat with the Big Chillers here.

Later on I caught some of Daedelus, a DJ who was playing the Club Tent which fulfilled my desire to have a boogie but tiredness soon set in so I wandered back to the car, wound the seat right back as horizontal as it would go, got tucked up in my sleeping bag and was out light a light.


Georgie Rogers