Victorious Festival | Day 2

Saturday was a beautiful day, and because Connor had to work at the festival filming I invited my lovely friend Charis (as seen above) to explore and be my photographer.

We got to the site early to have a look around and get some photos with no one else around and grabbed a bacon roll from a food truck in the kid's area. There was also a chocolate company called Montezuma's giving out free bars of chocolate which was actually really nice, they have dairy free, gluten free and vegan chocolate bars. I'm a little bit in love with their chocolate and will have to seek out their Chichester store soon!

I love that at festivals there are cute little market stalls, especially as they might have something that you need like Charis needed sunglasses and lots of stalls had them! Plus it's another way to kill some time if you're waiting for an artist.

We survived mostly on the free Coca-Cola cans being given out, they had vanilla, peach and cherry mini cans and you could recycle them back to their area, and if you queued to go inside you could win prizes. Probably the best incentive to recycle cans ever and the vanilla was my favourite.

The Strongbow area were giving out free Dark Fruits ice cream, it was 1.1% alcohol in it so after they ID-ed me I enjoyed my ice cream. I loved how many companies were giving out free food and drink at the festival, I think it's a great way to try new things without having to burn a hole in your pocket.

As it was busier today there were a lot more people about, and I noticed a lot of rubbish just thrown on the floor when there’s plenty of bins. Literally, Victorious organisers had so many bins, recycling bins and even points where you give the cups in to be reused. 

Even in the VIP area a group of people threw all of their cans on the floor and just left about 10-15 cans of rubbish and they pushed crisp packets in between the wooden bench. Myself and Charis helped clean up the area when a litter picker came by.

It was lovely to walk around the full site today and have a look at all of the other food vendors and market stalls that had opened up. I even saw a human fruit machine, I’m not sure what they were promoting but it was hilarious. Lots of families invested in those inflatable sofa things where you have to run around with it to get air in it. Top quality entertainment right there.

There were a lot of younger festival goers today, and a lot more scantily dressed ones. The weather was a lot more suitable for that kind of festival vibe, but some of them looked so young and I saw a lot of bums and boobs.

Today I was most excited to see Gabrielle Aplin and Paloma Faith, I've been fortunate to see both of these artists before and loved them so much I needed to see them again. Gabrielle was on quite early in the way which was a lovely way to compliment her soft voice in the sunshine. I always forget how many of her songs I know, and I enjoyed singing along to Panic Chord, Night Bus and Please Don't Say You Love Me. I made a mental note to add some of my faves to a Spotify playlist.

I ran into some family friends who said I needed to watch the Happy Mondays, which I can say I only know about them because of Shaun Ryder when he was on I'm A Celeb. We didn't have anyone else we wanted to see at this time, so we thought we'd educate ourselves and see what they were like. It was fantastic, maybe not in the way of a good quality performance but one of the band members; Bez was so entertaining. He was playing the "maracas" but you could obviously see he wasn't contributing to the music as he sauntered up and down the stage doing a little mince-type dance and waving the maracas around. Bez absolutely made my day and I was in stitches.

One of my favourite independent restaurants is Pie and Vinyl in Castle Road, Portsmouth. They do amazing pies with all the fixings, it was so good to see them at Victorious. They had changed the names of the pies to have Victorious themed pies, I chose Chick-torious as it's one of my favourites and it's just delicious. They also have options for vegetarians, vegans, gluten free and dairy free food.

photo credit: Tom Langford

The line up for Saturday had a few well-known legends, as well as the Happy Mondays, Victorious also had Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys - with some of the original members, and also Paul Weller from The Jamm. I must admit I didn't know too many of their songs but I love God Only Knows What I'd Be Without You by The Beach Boys and Town Called Malice by the Jamm.

After hearing some of the golden oldies, we moved over to the Castle Stage to see the lovely Paloma Faith. Admittedly, I don't know much of her newer songs but I loved her first two albums. Paloma was wearing a pink patterned A-style cut dress with funky pink glasses - she kind of reminded me of Linda from Gimme Gimme Gimme but it was a good vibe.

photo credit: Tom Langford

I wasn't really into Paloma's performance, it was a bit odd and I know she's a very quirky person but I personally wasn't really enjoying it and it just felt like something was missing? We left after four songs as I wasn't feeling it and we partied our butts off in the Strongbow arena and met with my boyfriend and friend. It was really good to just let loose the dance moves as everyone was having a good time and the DJ set had constant tunes playing. It was a really good way to end the day.

The Saturday was so amazing, it was great to have a bit of sunshine and there was an amazing sunset behind the festival. It's in an amazing setting taking up most of Southsea Common, the D Day Museum, and Southsea Castle.

#peasandlove

My Sunday post will be up soon!

All photos taken of me were by my friend Charis on my Canon EOS M10.

Disclaimer: Carousel PR were generous enough to grant me a press pass for the whole weekend at Victorious Festival which included access to the VIP area. All thoughts and opinions are my own.