Good:
Friday and Sunday line-ups
-Twisted FUCKING Sister <3!
-Evil Scarecrow, Gloryhammer, Fury, Symphony X, Dragonforce (when the sound issues were fixed!), Beyond the Black, Pythia, Chasing Dragons, Pulverise, Vice
-Footprints in the Custard playing to a packed out New Blood tent
-Good weather
-Chilli bowls from the vegetarian/vegan place - super filling and tasty for £8, AND you can eat the bowl. Nom. (Normally I'm a Deli Kate's girl but the lines were SO LONG.)
-Mr Tea's
-Sound, overall (Sophie on the last day was getting a little bit 'everything louder than everything else' during Pythia, but otherwise well done to the sound crew)
-Toilets were great (for festival toilets), especially in the VIP bar
-Selection of ales in the VIP bar
-Friendly security who seem to have struck a good balance
-Being able to bring my own food and drink into the arena. Ironically, this probably meant that I wound up spending MORE because I was already tipsy so didn't really balk at paying £4.20 a pint. (My liver would put this into 'The Bad'.)
The Bad:
No signposting from the North on the A38, so missed the junction and had to turn around. (This was our 10th Bloodstock, no idea how we could have missed it!)
Didn't have enough time to do everything I wanted to do (lines at the Kraken ice cream place meant I didn't get black ice cream, kept meaning to go to the art gallery, but had a drink or food with me whenever I passed it, etc.)
The "tea" in the campsite from 'Gallops Farm'. (Tasteless, lukewarm brown water. Thank the gods for Mr Teas.)
The only real negative...
I met my first really mean person at Bloodstock. (I had some jerk call me fat and other things on the forums a couple of years ago, but in person everyone I've spoken to at Bloodstock has been amazing.)
As I said before, this was my 10th Bloodstock and everyone I've ever met has been lovely - until Saturday.
Mastodon had finished, and my friend and I were sitting toward the back of the field chatting while we waited for my husband to go to the bathroom. A loudmouthed jerk came up behind my friend at the end of Mastodon, after listening to our conversation (supposedly), and called him a hypocrite. When my friend asked why he said that, he rambled on something about tattoos on women - which wasn't the topic of our conversation at all.
This random jerk was adamant that my friend was then denying what he had (supposedly?) said about women and tattoos, so he called my friend a liar and a cunt. He kept leaning over my friend in quite a threatening manner (we were both sitting down in lawn chairs). My husband came back from the toilet and asked what was going on - so this guy started on him too, and it only finished when I said that he needed to go and get on with his festival or I would get security.
It was really worrying because Mastodon had been finished for awhile at this point and there weren't that many people around - all our friends had gone to watch Acid Reign or back to the campsite. It felt a bit like this guy was spoiling for a fight, but he staggered out toward the campsites so hopefully he went to sleep it off and didn't try to pick an argument with anyone else.
This was the only really negative thing about the festival that I experienced!
The ugly:
My bank balance
My husband's godawful snoring
My hair - after four days of sweat, bug spray, sunblock, moisturiser, etc., when I took it out of the bobble, it stayed in place (until I had a shower). Gross.
Some really awful nasty blisters (ouch).
Had a brill time at Bloodstock, chatted to loads of interesting people, got to meet several people I only knew online...really looking forward to 2017
