endorse-it in dorset pt 2

My Endorse-It experience is just as much to do with the friends, good vibe & general weirdness as the music. We had our friends Ian & Byron camped with us in the campervan field which was cool. As neither of them drove to the festival they were already well into the festival mood when they arrived! There was also other people I knew camped elsewhere or working at the festival. I was looking forward to catching up with old friends I had worked with at previous Endorse-Its, Flounder, Morph, Ffi, Alex and also people I had met over the years there, Chris, Duncan, Gary, Vinny & Sara. Also I was chuffed to be meeting Alan who I had as an 'internet friend' for many years after he kindly let me use some words & pictures from his book 'A Time To Travel'. This book is amazing, now sadly out of print you can get it as an ebook or keep an eye on Ebay!

The Endorse-It site had some beautifully weird sculptures dotted around courtesy of the Wrekon crew who are masters of road scrap sculpture. There was a massive EIID (Endorse-It In Dorset) which got painted throughout the weekend. There was also a 'Naughty Step' a massive step for people to sit on after they had been very naughty! The site was interesting & well laid out apart from the stages being too close especially the Bus Bar stage, La Boite A Musique stage & the Wigon Casino.

This year saw the return of the Strummerville camp fire area. Strummerville is a charity that help aspiring musicians. Strummerville camp this year was bigger, with a bigger fire, a bigger stage & more sofas :) It is a really nice area & it is great to be able to sit round a fire & on sofas :D Also back this year was the Purple Purge stage, put on by teenagers for teenagers we were lucky enough to catch veteran DJs Dapper the Mascara Man, also good friends I think they would agree that they're not quite teenagers any more! Never the less they played a great Reggae set that the teenagers seemed to enjoy.

We looked round the very chilled out Pixie Chill area which had some small tents offering a range of healing therapies. It is a lovely quite corner of the festival & the perfect place to really chill out. We also enjoyed the Peaceful Progress cafe in the kids area which played some lovely Reggae at times & made a lovely cup of hot chocolate :)

All to soon Sunday was upon us but to top the festival off in style Sunday was ladies day. The amazing array of blokes in frocks was brilliant. I could sit all day watching them, guessing who had bought a costume from home, who had bought theirs at the festival & who had borrowed their wife's/girlfriend's clothes. There was a Miss Endorse-It competition that unfortunately I missed but was lucky enough to meet the winner :)

So another great Endorse-It festival was over. The weather had just about behaved, it had always been prety warm. There had been some rain on the Friday for a few hours when we arrived & on the Saturday we had a brief but really heavy downpour. There was not enough rain to make things really muddy though & Sunday was a scorcher.It's sad that we wont be able to go next year but hopefully we'll be able to experience a continental festival or two :)

Here's some pictures that capture the festival...