Beacons Area Festival?

[Muddywellies]

The weeks are flying by and the closing date for my first choice of AF is looming. I may run out of time to get my qualifying sheets so looking at a plan B.
I've googled for photos and snippets of video of this venue (there isn't much) and it looks lovely.
What are people's experiences of Area Festivals at Beacons? Arenas? Warm up arenas? Stabling? Staying over (in lorry) ? General 'busyness'/atmosphere Etc etc

 

[milliepops]

All good 😁
I have to stay overnight to go to beacons. Stabling is excellent, I've only ever had the permanent boxes but there are a few temp ones... get your booking in early and you can choose.

Nice cafe and scoreboard area
Plenty of parking
Hook up if you need it
Arenas are lovely
Cheap glamping down the road if you don't want to stay in your box.
Nice inbetweeny atmosphere.. they make a pleasing fuss about a big show but it's not intimidating for the horses.

Only issue I've had is the phone service isn't great so its sometimes hard getting hold of the organisers.

 

[Muddywellies]

Is it a quieter atmosphere? Looking at the schedule it looks like it's only running over 2 days and I couldn't see any warm up classes so I assume only 1 arena?
It sounds like it'll be fairly quiet as far as area festivals go ?
We usually do Sparsholt but last year, with about 40 in a class, and 3 arenas running with 1 warmup, it was ridiculously busy.

 

[milliepops]

Some classes were fairly busy last year. I went to 2nd round with kira but supported a friend at 1st round.

The warm up is massive. Theres a small arena next to the main long arena. the first time I went , a few years ago now,they did warm up classes but I haven't seen any since then.

It's a peaceful place for the horses to stay imo, the yard is quite settled.
They have speakers, music etc in the test arena plus theres loads of banners and flowers as usual but I wouldn't say it was too buzzing because there's only one test running at a time.

 

[Muddywellies]

It sounds just lovely. Bit of a drive but I think it'll be perfect for us ☺️

 

[milliepops]

On a nice day its absolutely stunning too, up in the mountains 🤩 if I could get there and back in a day I'd go more often.