Here’s a bit more information about me going to Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival snd what it is.

Belladrum started in 2004 as a 1 day festival for 2,000 people.  It was in December 2004 that I moved to the Highlands and rented a house just up the hill from where the festival is held, on the Belladrum Estate.  In the summer, if the wind was blowing in the right direction we could hear what was being sung on the main stage!  

Since then it has grown and grown and is now a 3 day festival for 20,000 people.  It has lots of different tents and bars and stages playing all sorts of different music.  I’d be tempted to say you can find any style of music there, except classical.  Certainly pop, indie, rock, jazz, country and electronic dance music are all covered.  It even has the Verb tent that has talks, poetry and in the late evening sing along movies!  It has tons of things to entertain younger children and even has ballroom dancing classes and yoga classes.  They really cater for everyone it seems.

In 2014 my husband went with his friends for the full weekend, but didn’t camp; I was dropping him off and picking him up!  I first went in 2016, with my husband, and we just had a Saturday only ticket.  We’d bought it as one of the few bands we both like, Turin Brakes, were playing there.  I’ve linked their YouTube channel.  

In 2018 I went with my friends Steph and Wendy and we all camped together and had a great time.  The headliners were Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Paloma Faith, Primal Scream, The Charlatans.

We decided we’d go again in 2019 and bought our tickets on the day they were released.  The tickets have sold out in advance every year since 2008, so you have to be quick.  When you buy the tickets on release date you have no idea who will be playing, but this is a festival that it doesn’t even matter who is playing…there’s a great atmosphere and enough stages etc that you’d be hard pushed not to find something you enjoy.  The website has already changed its main page to focus on 2020, so Wikipedia or BBC news are probably better places to find out more about it.  

Every year there’s a theme and this year was Space and Sci-Fi, so we saw aliens, UFOs, Star Trek outfits, storm troopers and so on.  Saturday is when you see most outfits.

On Thursday we wandered around, seeing what was new and in the evening we went to the Garden (main) Stage, where Tom Odell and Elbow were headlining.  The Garden stage has an amphitheatre so you can be in the main crowd or on the terraces. 

On Friday we avoided the main stage and tried to cover as many of the smaller stages as possible.  Steph and Wendy sorted us out a line-up and we saw a good mix of different acts.

On Saturday we set-up our chairs on the terrace of the Garden Stage and took it in turns to guard our spot all day.  At 4pm the best act of the festival, who appear every year, was Colonel Mustard and the Dijon 5.  They are so funny and it’s interactive with the huge crowd doing the actions to their songs, including bouncy ball and cross the road!  Do have a look at a YouTube clip of them doing Cross the Road at Belladrum and it will give you a sense of the madness.  Hopefully you’ll understand his strong accent.  This year they had more people than ever doing it!  So not much space to cross the road.  We (well 3 of us) were right up at the front of the stage for this bit.  The headliners on Saturday were Lewis Capaldi and Jess Glynne.

It was so baking hot on Saturday I had my umbrella up as a sun parasol and eventually had to change out of my alien t-shirt and longer shorts and bought a thin cotton dress on one of the stalls which was much cooler.  I’d dyed my hair purple which is hard to see on the photos as the sun was so bright, but I’ve included a silly photo I took at the house.  The hat and flower are filters but you can see my hair colour well.  I’m tempted to dye it purple with permanent colour!!!  

Anyhoo!  Here’s some photos taken at the weekend.  Some photos were taken by my friends, I kept forgetting to take them.  The top left picture in the collage, you may spot some sparkles on my upper chest…they were melting off my face!

Next year’s tickets go on sale next week and we will be buying them again! 

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