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Bloc Weekender
Mar. 26th, 2007 04:30 pmBack from the Bloc Weekend party, held at a Pontin's holiday camp near Hemsby in Norfolk.
I had a fun time, I liked Autechre, and bounced around to The Advent and CJ Bolland, and it's always good to hang around with friends. However, I can't help feeling that I probably would have had just as much fun by going out to a big party/club thing in London, really. I say this, because really the Bloc Weekend festival didn't have much going on except the three music areas. In my mind, "real" festivals have loads of stuff going on during the day and evening - you know, shopping stalls, food stalls, juggling, random bad art, etc. etc.
Bloc had none of that - there was some advertised, go-karts, indoor swimming pool, climbing wall, however none of it was in operation over the weekend. (Probably for the best though - there were a lot of wasted people wandering around even during the day).
Also, the venue /really/ didn't deal well with having 2500 ravers descend upon them. The organisation was a total shambles for dealing with many people arriving/leaving at once, and so that took hours. The bus ride was particularly badly organised, with their system for loading people being the most inefficient way you could think of. Originally advertised as leaving at 8pm on Sunday, they eventually took off around 9:45pm, arriving back in London some time after 1am. (And leaving me particularly knackered on Monday morning for work!)
During the friday/saturday night stretches, the bar staff looked rather stressed - they seemed to only have put a couple of staff at each bar, having to deal with a hundred people trying to buy beer or water at once. By saturday night they actually /ran out/ of bottled water, and initially were refusing to give out cups as "we need them to serve beer in!". This didn't go down with the punters particularly well!
I'm sounding rather down about the whole thing, but actually it was quite nice to have a weekend away with friends - it just could have been better. I won't be recommending this festival for repeat visits, although I dare say they'd learn and not be quite so incompetent next time.
I had a fun time, I liked Autechre, and bounced around to The Advent and CJ Bolland, and it's always good to hang around with friends. However, I can't help feeling that I probably would have had just as much fun by going out to a big party/club thing in London, really. I say this, because really the Bloc Weekend festival didn't have much going on except the three music areas. In my mind, "real" festivals have loads of stuff going on during the day and evening - you know, shopping stalls, food stalls, juggling, random bad art, etc. etc.
Bloc had none of that - there was some advertised, go-karts, indoor swimming pool, climbing wall, however none of it was in operation over the weekend. (Probably for the best though - there were a lot of wasted people wandering around even during the day).
Also, the venue /really/ didn't deal well with having 2500 ravers descend upon them. The organisation was a total shambles for dealing with many people arriving/leaving at once, and so that took hours. The bus ride was particularly badly organised, with their system for loading people being the most inefficient way you could think of. Originally advertised as leaving at 8pm on Sunday, they eventually took off around 9:45pm, arriving back in London some time after 1am. (And leaving me particularly knackered on Monday morning for work!)
During the friday/saturday night stretches, the bar staff looked rather stressed - they seemed to only have put a couple of staff at each bar, having to deal with a hundred people trying to buy beer or water at once. By saturday night they actually /ran out/ of bottled water, and initially were refusing to give out cups as "we need them to serve beer in!". This didn't go down with the punters particularly well!
I'm sounding rather down about the whole thing, but actually it was quite nice to have a weekend away with friends - it just could have been better. I won't be recommending this festival for repeat visits, although I dare say they'd learn and not be quite so incompetent next time.