Bannockburn Live was a festival celebrating Scottish culture, food, crafts and music along with a big battle repeated 3 times a day. Now how can I sum it up in one phrase.... a load of fucking overpriced shite. The craft section was 10 tiny stalls many of which were selling stuff that was too big to lug about a crowded festival, like furniture made from oak kegs. There were only 4 food venders (although I have since heard there was a hidden 5th one) catering for 10,000 people, yes I said 10,000. And there was a farmers market... a small farmers market... that sold sweets... and sea food. I have no idea why anyone would want to lug a lobster around a hot summer festival.
Now my main gripe with the event... The fucking ques. Out of the five hours we were there we must have spent at least three and a half of them in a que. There was a que to get parked. There was a que to get in, and from that que we could see the que on the motorway. There was a que for the battle, luckily we got into the first one and missed the que for the others which stretched the complete length of the event (that isn't an exaggeration). There were ques for the food which moved once every 45 minutes. We were in that one for well over 2 hours before we decided we'd had enough and left. We paid £52 (for the pair of us and parking) to stand in a fucking que simulator. I'm glad I had my tickets delivered to my house because the people who collected theirs at the gate had to que to get parked the walk past the entrance que (which was about a mile long, again not an exaggeration), collect their tickets walk to the back of the entrance que and make it even longer. Whereas people who bought theirs on the day could walk straight in, WTF?
Now onto the good points. The story time stage was good, some great acting and was generally quite a good laugh. However it was located too close to the music stage and was hard to hear at times. The music stage was good too with a variety of Scottish artists. The battle was good too, not the best I've seen but definitely the largest. The medieval camp was great, although due to the tight scheduling of the battles was practically empty for vast portions of the day. However with 10,000 people there and only 3,000 people being able to view the battle at once and only 3 battles a day means that 1,000 people were left out. Pretty bizarre considering that the battle was the main draw of the event.
The Sunday was supposedly better organized and relatively que-less. I don't quite believe that and can't comment. Now given my experiences of the event will I go next year? Absolutely not. The event was far too overpriced and poorly organized. The organizers had a chance to create something great and failed. All in all a very poor celebration of the 700th anniversary of Scotland's most famous battle.
I'll leave you with the pictures I took during the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment