Holding a festival in Inverness, you could imagine it would not be the most pleasant of weather, but it was actually (almost) dry all weekend, in comparison to Download festival, which I heard from friend it was a massive washout. I never actually realised how far away Inverness was, until I saw that the Rockness Express takes 14 hours from London! This was the first year they have held anything like the Express, so surely some things had to go wrong.
It was a specific train the festival organised to haul people from London to the festival via Birmingham, Stoke, York and Newcastle, and costing £250 including a VIP weekend ticket, you couldn't really go wrong! But oh, so much did. Firstly, a week before the train, they announced it would be departing from Birmingham International instead of New Street, and Stoke-On-Trent instead of Derby, which would have been a massive pain if one had already booked train tickets to said station. Then we were all told that if we wanted to sit next with each other, we would have to board at the same station, which was a pain as our group were planning on boarding in London, Stoke and York. But once on the train, you soon forgot their hiccups, as the 12 carriage train was full of excited festival goers, setting themselves up by drinking for 14 hours before the festival even beginning, made such an electric atmosphere (unlike any other train ride I’ve ever been on). However, we should have thought this one through, as after hours of alcohol consumption and frolics, we arrived at 10pm in the middle of nowhere to erect a tent (I kid you not, it took 4 of us 2 whole hours to put our 5 man tent up). I also forgot to mention the smoking policy on the Rockness Express...you can't. So after a few hours of drinking, my friend decided to have a fag out the window (this train was so old-school, you could pull the widows down on the doors in between carriages), after he got away with the first one, he was smoking every 20 minutes. However, during smoking one of his many fags, the train jerked, he put his arm out to stop himself from falling, the window was open, and he managed to fall onto a metal bar, breaking a couple of ribs. What a great start to the weekend!
They stated on the description for the train that there would be bands and DJ's playing on it, so we set ourselves up for a proper gig on a train...we were handed headphones and could choose to listen to a couple of idiots play average music and play boring games the whole journey. Upon arrival, and getting our bags checked, one friend had 17 cans of Strongbow confiscated for no apparent reason. But all was forgotten the next day when we woke up with a beautiful view of Loch Ness, and managed to hear a few local legend tales from a taxi driver taking us to the local Tescos.
Without a doubt, the best band of the weekend were Momford and Sons. As soon as I saw them on the line up, I knew I was going to attend the festival, and they did not let me down. Another favourite were the Errors, I’ve seen them a couple of times before, and as they are not that well known, the crowd was minimal, so we could stand right at the front. There were a couple camped next to us, who insisted we watch Knife Party with them, they described them as 'dirty, grimy dubstep'. They weren't wrong. Some of the best dubstep I’ve heard in a long time, definitlely going to keep my eye out for any London gigs.
All in all a top weekend. Fantastic line-up and incredible location. Would I recommend it? Definitely, but I would take a normal train up to Inverness, it does cost more, but takes only 8 hours, as the 14 hour journey home was brutal!
(a special thanks to William House for the fantastic photographs @that_guywill )
