Guilford’s growing festival was a pleasant surprise - the atmosphere great, the line up varied and the whole weekend a surprising success, says Chloe Addo.

In its short life GuilFest has been nominated the best family festival for the past two years and has built up quite a following of regular attendees - both locals and gig goers from afar.

GuilFest 2008, set in Surrey’s Stoke Park, Guildford, welcomed new age hippies, rock fans, teeny boppers, indie crews and Blondie fanatics over the entire three days.

GuilFest Festival Review: The Levellers, Blondie and the Australian Pink Floyd

Friday kicked off at 5pm and boasted a modest number of festival goers. Walking up to the festival gates it’s a little tricky to work the main entrance. Campers’ tents are everywhere and people are strolling around aimlessly. Soon we manage to find our gate and greeted with friendly staff all having a laugh with each other and new arrivals.

Already the festival spirit was in full swing and walking through security onto Stoke Park territory all corners of the park were filled with lively music stages and a buzzing crowd. Straight ahead were a variety of food stalls - smelling great.

To the left was the Ents Stage and on the right the Commercial stage – soon to be graced by headliners The Levellers, Blondie and the Australian Pink Floyd. While these stages seemed to have welcomed some of the best artists over the weekend, include System 7, Bowling for Soup and Kula Shaker, the broad range of acts on all the stages was pretty impressive. In total gig goers got to see 6 varied music stages and one hilarious comedy tent.

GuilFest Festival Review: The Funky End Stage

In contrast to Saturday’s gig, Friday was comparatively quiet. With the sun shining brightly and the park filled to bursting, the atmosphere was a little different on Saturday, but definitely for the best. More teeny boppers in aluminous leggings were out to play, although this doesn’t represent the overall GuilFest gig goer. Expect a mature audience with a strong taste for rock and some classic music material.

The Funky End Stage was the place to be for dance floor maniacs, this is where I later found all ages in aluminous gear getting down to the sounds of Krafty Kuts, Hallucinogen and Agent Smith.

GuilFest Festival Review: What to Expect from GuilFest

Newbies at the fest included Royworld who performed hit indie single “Dust”, followed by some chilled out tracks demonstrating a specific Royworld style.

Headliners over the weekend were amazing, favourites being Blondie who’s front lady Debbie Harry rocked the mike and looked stunning at 63- what a lady!

If you like the idea of a medium sized gig with a lot of atmosphere then you should definitely check out GuilFest. Just be warned the line up features some great musical legends, the relatively unknown and only a few in between. So if you like to see acts regularly topping the charts like the Raconteurs, Scouting for Girls or Armen Van Helden, don’t expect it at GuilFest any time soon.

For more information on GuilFest visit: www.guilfest.co.uk