I am just back from Bestival so here's a quick (mainly image-based) review of the weekend. Have to say it was quite a young festival, a lot younger than I was expecting, with good programming on the music front. All the under 25s look like they are out of Geordie Shore (is that just the norm these days) with boys wearing caps backwards and girls with tails???

The big outdoor dance stage - The Port - at the end of the site was really well put together with high production values and DJs that fitted the brief playing from a massive boat that was where the main stage had been in previous years. If you got bored for a minute it was easy to look up and find an acrobat to watch hovering over your head via a massive crane or the dancers throwing shapes on the deck. My friends were saying that in previous years there was loads of bass music (Dubstep etc) but this year you could see (well hear) that HOUSE was back with a bang and ruling the roost.

Favourites for me at The Port one were the 2 Bears and Julio Bashmore. The 2 Bears hit that point between fun and "proper" dance music perfectly, ending on their love-house number that is 'Bear Hug' with Julio Bashmore playing across the old and new spectrum but plucking out the ones that worked on a big system (stand forward an edit of Lil' Louis' 'Club Lonely'). Frank Tope was great as ever and from a Balearic perspective there was were some mellow woods and Phil Mison DJing in a tree (which he did very well getting the party started after someone playing some standard basic floor kill before). Band wise we saw about two songs from Belle & Sebastian (funny frontman) and shamefully that was about it. It was more about a wander round and stumbling on stuff.

As I mentioned earlier the production across the whole site was clearly done with love. The bars were designed to be in keeping with the HMS theme and even the food stalls were tailored to the stages they were located near to. Fancy dress plays a massive part at Bestival, as most people know, with some of our mates fitting the theme by going as (sorry about this) German U-boat sailors or Das Booty Boys (that's them trying to pull serious sailor faces below).

As ever with festivals its more about who you are hanging with and what you end up doing and we had the perfect bunch of people to run with and a joint goal of just getting lost in it which we accomplished pretty well. Excuse the crap photos but I hope in some way they help sum the weekend up. It was all about new friends (some old ones), good music and loads of stupidity. Perfect.

Shouts out to Colin, Dan, Del & good ladies of Bath.