Words cant really describe how Big the Big chill actually was.  Last month I went to a festival every weekend. Starting with Nozstock in Herefordshire. An intimate family festival on a farm with around 3000 attendees.
 
Next I traveled all the way up north to Scotland and the Wickerman festival. Slightly larger and slightly wetter than the first. A week after the neat rum drinking carnage of Wickerman I headed down to Cumbria to Kendal Calling and set up my tent once again for a weekend spent with Father Ted, Wally from Where's Wally and a proper nice group of lads from Morecambe who introduced me to the "Harvey Wallbanger" drink and Jagermeister breakfast.

Big Chill was my final outing of the Summer and it seemed fitting that after running around the country for four weeks I should be back in Herefordshire just a few miles down from where it all started at Nozstock.  

Sorry to everyone at the other festivals but Big Chill was by far my fucking favourite.  I wish I was still there now. Ive got that longing feeling you get after you've been to a really amazing rave.  Where you find yourself listening to tunes you heard and trying to conjure up every last drop of memory from when you were there.

Stop paying attention for a few minutes and your eyes glaze over and you sink right back into it. Ive had it before in Manchester with nights like Ape at the Apollo and at some of the free parties like the one in Buxton in May. (If your not from manny you wont understand how good our free parties are).

I got to Big chill late on Friday night and after wrestling with our tent in the dark only to find that at its last outing at Leeds it had been graffiti with the words Team Bareback in bright pink letters we headed into the site.  My second deer park in ten days.

From the start I could tell Big Chill was probably gonna trump my other festival visits. It was by far the largest site so far and had a great vibe. Plus it was dark so everything seemed more exciting.  

First thing I was confronted with on walking in was a huge array of stacked flashing cubes surrounded by silent ravers set against a backdrop of fairground rides which really didn't appeal to my Appleton heavy stomach.

A program was 8 quid and they didn't give any to press so I don't know what anything was called. We were in purple camping so we came in at one end of a rectangle and the festival was just straight ahead of us like one big corridor of excitement.

Halfway down it we came across the Main Stage just in time to see Massive Attack play "Teardrop" (the tune everyone wanted to see in case you don't know about Massive Attack).

The rest of Friday was pretty much passed in the Drum and Bass tent which was standardly destroyed by the Hospital crew.
    
On Saturday lunch time when we crawled out of the volcanic climate of the Team Bareback tent and no time was wasted.  So far we had only explored the first quarter of the Big Chill site. It was time to go further down Chill st.

We sampled some Reggae at Mr Scruff's tent selected by none other than Manc veteran Mikey Don before weaving through the various set ups designed to make festivals surreal.

My only criticism of the whole site is the hill which it is necessary to climb to get to all those mad tents offering Massages, Saunas and interesting dinners. Including the hilariously named "Bhatti Wraps".   

Hills and excessive drinking just don't work well together especially in baking sun.  It would take too long to write about all the things happening on and around that hill. My best advice is if you want to know buy a ticket and go.

So with our site exploration done we returned to the tent and planned out our saturday night. As Saturday nights go I think its a while since Ive had such a varied music experience on one night and probably will be a while until I top it.

I still don't understand why I waited to watch Kelis? I don't think I ever will know.  But I did and I cant have that bit of my life back so there's no point mourning it.  Plan B and Tinie Tempah played teeny pop sets as you'd expect.

Fair play to Plan B for making it big by dressing as a Grandad and singing in a high voice it seems to work.
 
Next up we moved onto the flashy cubes for a bit of Toddla T and Serocee. Toddla T has to go down as one of the best DJs around at the moment just for sheer tune selection and versatility.

Somehow he manages to fit jungle, dubstep, dnb, house and hip hop into one unified piece of music and make it work really well. Having had our ears assaulted by Toddlas multi genre onslaught it was time to head down to the Deer Park Stage for a bit of Mad Decent's M.I.A.

As we arrived she was mid way through her chart hit Paper Planes and decided to invite the whole festival on stage with her.  They duly accepted the invitation and her set was cut short as hundreds of people hopped over the barrier to the forbidden stage area.  

Something we should all learn from in society that theres more of us than the people in control. If we choose to we can do what we want.  

So thats all we saw of M.I.A.  A bit after all this we ended up back at the camp site. At which point the controversial Alan shouting began.  Those people who go to festivals looking to have nice kip and watch some nice clog dancing and then object to any noise making being made in festival camp sites after newsnights finished are cunts.  People shouting Alan at 4 AM is and was hilarious.  
    
On Sunday my Big Chilling capabilities were severely diminished and it took a lot of effort to get the medicinal Smirnoff down me but I managed all in the interest of journalism.  

The third and final night of Big Chill kicked off with the huge Firework display which put Wickerman's to shame and definitely took my mind off my treble strength hangover.  

Shortly afterwards Lily Allen fought off pregnancy and took to the Main Stage. I don't know wether the shouts of Alan at this point were for her or just general Alans. She ran through her impressive catalogue of catchy hits and even featured a guest appearance from Professor Green but there was more exciting things to see. Bonobo were on.  

One of the most amazing live acts around and definitely worth making the effort to see Bonobo killed the Clash stage. The atmosphere around the stage was warm and intimate exactly what you want from a festival.  

By the end of Bonobo things were getting cold and we rounded off the weekend with a chill at the enormous inflatable balls up on the hill and a little jaunt into the Lazyland area which we had only just found.

 My final memory of Big Chill before my long walk back to the tent with a £4 bottle of water is of watching an ageing DJ in a shiny silver coat with long sleeves and a fag in his mouth dancing madly to his set of austin powers style jazz with choral vocals laid over the top. (I know this man was Mixmaster Morris)  

So all in all.  There's been some people complaining about security and stuff. I personally saw none of this I had an amazing weekend and Big Chill was the climax of my Festival summer.  See you there next year.