Author: Natasha Molar

When the opportunity to experience CarFest headed my way, it may seem particularly daft for me to say that I didn’t realise there would be so many cars… In my defence, the line up poster I came across on Google was music heavy; live music acts at the top, DJ’s next, comedy / celebrity listings and then a line towards the bottom actually mentioned cars, just above the cookery masterclasses and mindfulness. But the location being Silverstone circuit – a new venue for CarFest – told me there was more to bargain for than that line on the poster suggested.

Established in 2012 by that ginger bloke off the radio and telly, Chris Evans, CarFest calls itself out as the UK’s largest family fundraising festival. If you need an extra excuse to go out and have a good time, 10% of every ticket sale goes to UK children’s charities, 100% of CarFest profits. But will you have a good time? Well, along with my able 8 year-old assistant, we certainly tested as many things as robustly as we could. Including my wallet.

Saturday

(…and genuinely sorry to have missed the vocally stunning Jessie J on the Friday)

Thanks to thunderstorms not agreeing with planes just a day before the festival, we were running very behind schedule. Perhaps a blessing in disguise that we were still sheltering in the car park as the heavens opened very enthusiastically onto the poor folks of CarFest. Still, by the time we joined the fun, the organisers had been out with the bark chips and we just got away with not having to bring out the wellies. Between Kart Silverstone and Young Driver – having both the Firefly Sport Car for ages 4-8 and instructor-led driving lessons in a Suzuki Swift (or similar) for ages 9-17 – we had barely made it off the starting line and I knew I’d need deep pockets!

I managed to wrangle the child into the festival proper, starting out at Kidfest. CarFest is sectioned off into the many different areas of the festival, a handy way to experience similar things you are keen to visit – not so useful if the whole family has ideas of doing different things in the moment. But the festival site overall is easy to navigate, so get yourselves sorted for a meet up point and make the most of what you want to do or you might run out of time. We found ourselves in a controlled area with wooden pallets to saw and nail into making dens. This is the most thrilling thing to do with real tools when you are 8 years old and also hard work when you’re the mum doing the actual sawing. I did repay by repeating ‘mate, we could’ve done DIY at home.’ Always good to confirm that you are, in fact, a parenting cliché.

To move into the other festival areas, you need to cross the race track, so you can’t just head in and out at any time; it’s closed for 30 minutes at four scheduled times during the day because it is understandably frowned upon to mix pedestrians with race cars. We took this time to head up into the stand and watch some cars whizzing past before exploring the enticing promise of the tents beyond.

First up SpaFest, centre for all things relaxing, including yoga, pottery, dance, sound baths, paint and crafts, with guests such as Mr Motivator, Sally Gunnell and Mo Farah. But relaxing with an excited youngster at a festival was not on the cards, so we snuck through RetroFest – me looking back longingly at the Vintage Tea Room and the Retro record Fair – but gladly able to appreciate some absolutely gorgeous car club motors in the Classic Quarter. Seeing people being able to bring their passions along and chat to people appreciating them is I think what gives CarFest some of its friendly family vibe; and we love to hear it.

Much as I could stare at a VW Karmann Ghia all day, I pressed us forward, blinkers on to finally get to the music arena. I feared we wouldn’t catch a single act, as there was so much to do. But catch we did, with James Morrison celebrating 20 years since his debut. What a voice! As a rocker, I’ll confess that I only know his classics like You Give Me Something and Broken Strings so I was pleasantly surprised to be impressed by his vocal tone and live performance. As I looked around the arena, families that had split off for different activities earlier in the day had re-met to make the most of the rare sunshine along with the music. I was struck by the multi-generational family set-ups as people settled into their camp chairs, and that solidified for me what CarFest is about – being there with your niece who is 18 months, your Dad who is 65 and every family member in between.

Rick Parfitt Jnr was up next with his band and as I was distracted by huge bubble blowing machines on poles adding to the atmosphere, my kid was rocking his socks off. Rick plays cover songs, mostly medleys, be it I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas to Seven Nation Army by White Stripes. I can be a serious old musical sausage at times and the thought of hearing more songs in this mash up monstrosity made me itch, until I looked around. Seeing so many happy, smiling faces sing back at each other, I succumbed to getting the little on my shoulders and dancing around. It’s what its all about after all. I switched the torch onto my phone and passed it to kiddo to wave in the air to Coldplay’s Fix You and Prince’s Purple Rain. In a sweet tribute to his Dad, recognising it being 10 years this year since he passed away, Rick Jnr shared that he’d bumped into his dad’s guitar tech who was there working with Tom Jones. Soon CarFest was Rockin’ All Over the World with the advice of ‘if you don’t know the lyrics, there aren’t many, you’ll soon get the hang of it.’ Too true Rick. It felt like the band couldn’t quite finish as they moved to one more song, followed by one more song and CarFest lapped it up.

I am of an age where I recall the joke about the Sugababes was that anyone might be in them by next week, but the line-up is back to the original members performing here at Silverstone. Despite my expressed fondness for rock music, I will frown upon anyone who doesn’t admit that Freak Like Me is an absolute banger and it was great to hear it live. Focussing on our stomachs, we stayed in earshot for hits such as Hole in the Head and Push the Button – it’s not hard to figure out why the Sugababes are a pop sensation. Of course, I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole to discover that all of the band were contributing songwriters. Bravo.

James Morrison might’ve been my biggest surprise of the day, but that’s only because I already had expectations of the headliner’s legendary voice. He was even on a TV show called The Voice for goodness sake! Unsurprisingly, stalwart 86-year-old Tom Jones knows how to entertain and charm a crowd. The guitar-based ballad he was singing – I knew the words, but somehow my mental filing couldn’t quite place it until ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb, you’re a Sex Bomb!’ And as the crown sang back It’s Not Unusual with gusto, it in fact was not unusual that my little man was quite tuckered out and we headed out to rest up for…

Sunday

A short walk in and we were greeted by Rock Choir near the Kart track – thank you for the warm and uplifting welcome. Back to Kidfest – of course we could not walk past – and a paid activity this time of what I can only describe as being put in with a load of balloons in a snow globe! We found ourselves with far too many things to do – from the Adrenaline Area with a climbing wall and zip line, to Pudsey’s Spot with BBC Children in Need – the little was scooted away from his new potential future in limbo to look at cars…

And boy, did we embrace being at Silverstone! Heading back across the track, we got a peep of the funny little Ford Pops (don’t @ me, I love them) racing around and doing a drift show.

Then we walked the Cars @ CarFest, adding onto our in-head car shopping wishlist. Ambling past the corporate sponsors, car makers, rally cars, everything shiny and slick…

…until we did hit a section in my price range – Hot Wheels! Alas, I had my eye on the rather wonderful full-size versions, but we played with the toys for some time while friends watched the supercars on the track. If you were quick off the mark with pre-booking, you could even run 3K of the track as part of the Festival Dash, but tickets sold out in advance. Shame. Who am I kidding? I wasn’t running…

This full size Riddler Hot Wheels Legend is a VW Beetle! Can you believe it? It was given away somewhat from the rear engine view, but even I didn’t twig initially from the front and I’ve spent long enough dealing with their special brand of nonsense as an owner…

Supercars hung out in the International Paddock and although you could look from the barrier, this wasn’t a place to get up close, as the cars were heading in and out to the racetrack. If you wanted to queue up for a Grid Walk, there was the opportunity to walk among the cars on the track once they were lined up and in position. And what does a fancy-pants person do when they want to show off their car even more? For a £100 pre-bookable donation, you could meet the owner in the paddock and sit at the wheel. If you were feeling flush – you could book a track ride for £600 upwards from Sporting Bears Dream Rides or with Road Rides starting from £20. All money in the bag for the good causes supported by CarFest.

If you wanted something a little faster, the drag teams had it covered, including the lovely folks from Santa Pod Raceway and the Junior Dragsters. I love a drag strip – the noise, the flames, the speed – but I wasn’t sold on letting my precious angel start racing, which is possible from age 8 apparently. Yeah, let’s gloss over that one…

Last bits of track action for the festival and we were thrilled to catch the drift show, where the tyres are genuinely mostly left on the track…

….as you can see clearly on the final laps of the day.

As the weekend drew to a close back in the music arena, I caught a moment of the Proclaimers who got folks up out of their chairs and singing along, which was no mean feat after a long weekend. But the kids had other ideas and so we caved and spent a small fortune in the funfair, and after too many rides the kids laid on the ground feeling sick, which tickled me more than it should as someone who gets motion sickness! Shamefully, we departed ahead of Rick Astley and headline act Nile Rogers & Chic but sometimes with kids at festivals, you just have to put their needs first. It’s a different experience but one that’s still worthwhile. As we wound our way out of the festival, 90s pop star Gabrielle was entertaining the crowds, singing perfectly Out of Reach, which is honestly how we felt about finding where we’d parked – organisers, more signage and lights for this please.

I’m not a veteran of CarFest, so I can’t compare against the previous events and what this meant for this first year at Silverstone. As a first timer, I noticed a few things I would consider before heading back. As corporate sponsored fundraising festival you definitely don’t want to be there on a budget. It’s possible, but it would affect just how much you could embrace all the fun things available (and the strain on your earholes if you are sensitive to repetitive requests of ‘I want to do that Mum!)’ and of course, you will want to be add to that lovely charity total. There’s a real feelgood factor to supporting the causes by having fun.

There is absolutely so much to do at Carfest, I haven’t even got to talking about the many stalls set out in FoodFest, the book store by Waterstones, The Author’s tent, the Tasting tent… I’d regard pre-planning as essential if you do want to attend specific events, such as the Festival Dash, and I suspect that slots to book a car ride may be limited or booked out on the day.

Overall, a jam-packed action weekend, suitable for all the family providing they have the energy or you seek accessible support – we did 17,000 steps both days and did not have the to and fro of the campsite to consider. You’d do well not to like all things and ditch folks by the track while you do a soundbath for example, but for those of us who do like all things, it’s best to accept that you won’t do all of them. And you’ll need some organisation and bags of energy to embrace as much as you possibly can.

Natasha Molar for SFG