My festival formula was simple; great music, good weather, good company, oh, and no "festival wankers" - you know who I mean. The beered up fat guy who lost control of his limited faculties in the first half hour and decides to start a fight at the bar before sending a pint of his own piss in an arc across the crowd, dispensing a shower of warm rain over you and your mates. He thinks Peter Andre is a serious artist and at some point he will either offer you out or try to buy drugs off you, or both. He's conflicted.
Hove Festival Norway 2009 Review, Part One
My Hove festival formula was simple; great music, good weather, good company, oh, and no "festival wankers" - you know who I mean. The beered up fat guy who lost control of his limited faculties in the first half hour and decides to start a fight at the bar before sending a pint of his own piss in an arc across the crowd, dispensing a shower of warm rain over you and your mates. He thinks Peter Andre is a serious artist and at some point he will either offer you out or try to buy drugs off you, or both. He's conflicted.
Instead of that, I settled on the Hove Festival - five days of bands on a beautiful island off the south coast of Norway. It ticked all the boxes, and Brandon Flowers of the Killers described it as his "best festival experience". Now I don't agree with everything Brandon Flowers says, he's said some odd things, but surely the man knows his festivals having played most of them. Hove Norway
Hove bills itself as a "nature festival" (not what you're thinking) due to its picturesque setting and the Norwegian love of all things fresh, clean and preferably outdoors, so I decided to make the trip relying only on public transport (and Ryanair). This has proved a deeply traumatic means of getting to UK festivals in the past and I was prepared for the worst.
So, with a tent, spare pants and not much else, I set off by train to Liverpool's John Lennon Airport - a pleasingly named place to start this festival adventure, Ryanair fly regularly to Oslo from here and London Stansted. The train got me to the airport with time to spare, so I amused myself by being robbed at the airport cafe for a stale sandwich, but this didn't really bother me as my flight had cost less than a tenner each way (plus the obligatory random charge by Ryanair).
Before I knew it I was winging my way to Norway. The flight is a little over an hour, and as we descended towards Oslo I could look down at the pretty network of blue flords and lush green islands that would be my home for the next few days. I had a brief moment of panic as I realised I'd left my Norwegian phrasebook on the train, but I needn't have worried as most of the locals I met spoke perfect English. Hove Festival Norway
Emerging from Oslo Torp to head to Hove Festival Norway airport into the hot Norwegian sun, I found my bus waiting just outside the terminal, boarded and set off on the four-hour trip down the coast to Arendal. It would have been hours quicker by hire car, but in my pursuit of getting back to nature, I sat back and enjoyed the trip. The bus was comfortable and took a picturesque route along the coastline, winding between crystal clear fjords and pretty villages with brightly painted wooden houses.
I arrived late afternoon in the small seaside town of Arendal, the sun was still high, and I easily found my way to the festival bus (this was all going too smoothly!). The buses run all afternoon and into the early hours of the morning, ferrying festivalgoers from the mainland across the bridge to the island of Tromoy which is a journey of about 15 minutes. Hove Norway
Surely now it was time for some transport trauma? A mile long traffic jam into the festival? A first encounter with a festival wanker? But in no time the bus pulled up right outside the entrance, and my Norwegian festival experience had really begun. Hove Norway
