Frequently nominated as best family and medium sized festival at the UK Festival Awards, GuilFest featured live music, as well as theatre, comedy, street performances, a children’s area, art/craft exhibitions, camping and loads more. GuilFest is held in the beautiful surroundings of Stoke Park, Guildford and in 2014 is under new management.
Rising once again like a phoenix from the ashes, GuilFest, The UK’s No. 1 family festival returns to its spiritual home – the idyllic grounds of Stoke Park on July 18th/19th/20th
Organisers are delighted to be back, and this year will see the original team (a team that swells to a number of over 2000 local people when the festival is in full swing!!) thoroughly committed to giving the town truly the best festival it has ever seen! Not only this, but organisers have reduced ticket prices too – With a limited number of early bird tickets.
Featuring over 200 music, comedy and theatre acts, spread over a variety of stages.
Visitors can expect touches GuilFest has come to be known and loved for such as Farmer Giles Barndance, The Massive 150ft Beer Tent selling all manner of beverages including traditional real ales, cocktail bars, food stalls from around the world, the fantastic art and craft village, and one of the best children’s areas on the festival circuit.
The GuilFest Kidzone with VIP guest appearances, fun rides, daring circus performers and much, much more.
New for the 2014 festival is The Spaced Inn – an arts, music, and performance venue with entertainment all weekend long – including open mic sessions and impromptu performances from local artists and musicians.
For visitors that want to experience GuilFest in style, a very limited number of VIP tickets will be available to the public allowing access to a backstage area with posh loos, a special bar and exclusive aftershow parties. You never know who you might see around there!
Other Attractions
Guildford’s outdoor swimming Lido and Spectrum Leisure Centre on either side of the festival grounds offer easy breaks from the main festival site with a refreshing swim as well as a showering opportunity for the campers. All in all, GuilFest has something for everyone with its friendly relaxed vibe and eclectic mix of music and entertainment.
Site and camping:
There are designated quiet camping areas for families and the site is relatively level with grass cut short – fine for buggies with reasonable sized wheels. The site is reasonably flat and easy to navigate.
Being a regular festival & rally goer for the last 25 years, and having been to Guilfest on a number of occasions as a day visitor in the past, my family & I decided to make a weekend of it and stay for Guilfest 2011.
The facilities where great and the festival arena is amazing. There are far more festival shops & food outlets than at Camp Bestival! On the face of it, it appeared to be the ultimate family festival.
However, when evening came the horror began.
We had decided to camp in Family / Quiet Camping area. Unfortunately, this did not deter a number of youths from causing havoc in this area. On the Friday night, we had the contents of our cold box – food & drink, stolen and spread about our site. Our eggs were smashed over our tents. Our neighbour’s had their clothes stolen on the same night.
The following night, our flag & pole was stolen. Our friends had 2 chairs stolen and 2 or 3 other people that I spoke to had had flags & poles stolen. On top of this, a colleague of ours padlocked his tent – and on his return on Saturday evening, found that someone had slashed open his tent and covered all his belongings in spaghetti hoops & tomato sauce. When I complained about the theft & vandalism, I was told by your staff that I was lucky that I had not had anything of value stolen!
In 25 years of camping at festivals & bike rallies, I have never come across such blatant thievery & criminal damage. I understand that the festival organisers cannot be held responsible for this, and a festival in a town centre does invite a certain element. However, in light of this, perhaps it might be an idea to have some kind of campsite security in future. At least an official presence would be useful. All there seemed to be where people by the fire exits, and a bloke asleep up the central lighting tower!
It’s a shame that the security & sniffer dogs put on at the main gate to stop people from bringing their own alcohol & drugs in to the arena were not utilised in the camping area. It did feel that we were very much left to our own devices and had no one to turn to when there was any trouble. The stewards where not at all interested in our problems.
I did accost two chaps of about 18/20 who were trying to steal a neighbour’s tent and saw them off. This was not before they threatened me in front of my children, and told us that they would be back in the night to do me. This ruined my 10 years old daughter’s birthday and she had to be taken home, as she understandably did not want to camp anymore.
It seems to be a great festival at Guilfest; however, I could never camp there again until some kind of security is put in place. I had to spend all Sunday night sitting outside our tents to protect from anything else being stolen or other violence. It really left a bad taste in our mouths after what could have been one of the best festivals we have been to.
Sadly, a festival where you fear for your safety of your possessions & your personal safety can not be classed as a family festival!
I have contacted the Guilfest team by email & letter – but never had any reply back from them.
Sounds like you had a really awful experience there.
We would love to hear from anyone else who had similar problems, and also from other people who had a completely different experience… so let us know how you found it?
I had a load of fun in the Kidz zone this year & it seemed that a LOT of festival kidz enjoyed my musical emporium.
See you there again next year
Furry Foot The Clown
Why put Adam Ant on at the same time as Roger Daltery. They should think of us oldies and what we’d like to see. Each year it seems to cater more for youngsters considering it use to be a blues/folk festival. Please don’t go down that road, it used to be a good all rounder. I’ll still go, but not for whole weekend!