Rhythm Festival 2011

Rhythm Festival 2011 – Logistics Report.
I bought a day ticket in advance for the Sunday of this 3-day festival. The ticket arrived in good time by post. On arriving at Old Warden on the Sunday morning I found there was no festival traffic, so had to cruise through the village looking for the festival entrance. There wasn’t any trail of temporary signs. There was adequate parking on a field close to the arena entrance.
The festival boasted five stages: the primary outdoor stage, a second outdoor stage, an indoor stage in a marquee, and two more inside buildings. The land in the arena is unusually hilly, which provided complete visual and sound separation between the primary, second and marquee stages. If you want to sit, bring a folding chair. There was a huge beer tent (a handy place to retreat to during a rain shower), and the provision of toilets and catering was also adequate. Interestingly, on the ridge at the back of the primary stage spectator area was a line of tented booths for privileged spectators (corporates or paid extra). In case you needed something else to do there was a cinema marquee and a funfair on site as well.
As for the music, I’m no music reviewer but I enjoyed the music which, headlined by Toots and the Maytals, was clearly aimed at older rock fans. Attendance was of the order of 5000.