Quite a few of the Miniacs managed to get Reading tickets this year, despite initial disappointment when they all sold out within an hour and only four of us managed to buy any. Fortunately a few managed to sign up for the extra 10,000 tickets that the organisers were trying to get permission for. And with a little extra ticket shuffling and some amazing luck the total group consisted of much more than just Miniacs. The exceedingly happy bunch of campers were Ria, Neil, Mark, Matt, John, Tom, Nikki, Lindsay, Paul, Emma, Darren, Darren and Aisha. Only 2 Minis though, Ria's and Neil's although Mark did bump into Bex from Old Skool Mini Club who was parked close to us in the car park.
We arrived at about half 3 on Thursday with more
stuff then usual, as we were carrying stuff for people that were arriving later.
Due to the extra 10,000 camping capacity they organisers had moved the car parks
further away. This meant that we were supposed to get a free shuttle boat from
the car park to the camp site, but the queue was huge, about 3 hours waiting
time we found out later, so we decided to walk to the campsite. There were so
many people there already, and because of the amount of tents we had, we found
it really hard to find somewhere to camp. In the end we found some space in
brown camp, right up against the edge of the site. It was on a gravel road so it
was hard to pitch tents there. We ended up tent sharing to conserve space, but
it meant we didn't have any room for a camp fire.
The camper above was excellent,
it is 50% bigger than a real VW Camper. There were also some quite drunk men
building a tower of cups which was impressive.
Many bands were seen, The Subways were fantastic, as were The Kooks and Muse. There weren't too many big bands that clashed so most of us got to see who we wanted to. The Arctic Monkeys, The Futureheads, Belle & Sebastian and Feeder were all really good, but Kaiser Chiefs were overrated and spent more time pissing about than singing.