As the first screaming horde of seven-year-olds clamber over each other to get onto the world’s biggest bouncy castle, kiddie Glastonbury 2025 is go: Mr Tumble your Billy Bragg, a late-night Dick and Dom rave your secret Daft Punk set and out-of-date Calpol your brown acid. Over its award-laden 17-year history, this bubble-drenched offshoot of Rob da Bank’s late, lamented Bestival blow-out – held annually in the grounds of Dorset’s Lulworth Castle – has earnt its reputation as the summer’s finest family-friendly festival. With its giant robot statues, woodland craft playgrounds and all-ages club seshes, it caters perfectly to party people of all sizes and dispositions, be they boggle-eyed in bucket hats or caked in glitter in a DIY tutu. Or, in the case of the many dads of girls onsite, both.
This year, a site-wide plethora of caravans – converted into discos, diners, cinemas and video arcades, often accompanied by nearby Party Portaloos – give the event a retro seaside holiday feel, and the weekend is typically big on the Beebies. For the under-fives present, the CBeebies Bedtime Story Tent pyjama party is their lost night down Shangri-La. Watching CBBC’s resident emo rock arena band Andy and the Odd Socks power through the hits – a song about a dinosaur football match; a reggae tribute to the brilliance of snails – is all their Oasis reunions come at once. The main stage bills are stacked with Horrible Histories, Taylor Swift tributes and, courtesy of the Isle of Wight’s Vote Pedro, frantic mariachi covers of “Tainted Love”, “Livin’ on a Prayer” and Nirvana’s “Lithium”. Here, you’re never more than 10 feet away from someone in a banana-patterned shirt giving a crowd of significant size their first exposure to Abba’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”.
