This weekend saw thousands of people flock to Coventry’s War Memorial Park for Godiva Festival 2019. Since it’s first year in 1997, Godiva has always been a free festival. However, in order to control the number of people attending, this year was a ticketed event. Tickets for each day only cost £2, so it’s still a cheap day out. As this is one of the best festivals in the Midlands and it’s so close, I had to go along.

Godiva Festival

My first Godiva Festival experience was in 2015, when Embrace were headlining. I hadn’t anticipated how much bigger the festival would be four years later. This year the headliners were Levellers (Friday), Feeder (Saturday) and Busted (Sunday). I went along on the Sunday with my two work friends, Alice and Scarlett who are both huge Busted fans.

Location

Godiva Festival is located in Coventry’s War Memorial Park. The park is a short walk from Coventry railway station and it takes just 20 minutes on a train from Birmingham New Street. Coventry is on the Bournemouth to Manchester Cross Country line, making it really accessible from both the north and the south.

Facilities

This year there were a lot of different food vendors selling everything from hot doughnuts to Chinese food. There were two bars where the prices were pretty average for a festival (£6 for a rum and coke, £22 for a bottle of wine) and quite a few ice cream vans dotted around. One thing that really disappointed me was the fact that there was nowhere to refill water bottles. On the Godiva website, it says that you are able to bring in reusable water bottles as long as they are empty. This implies that you are able to refill them, however we didn’t see any refill stations around the festival.

There were quite a few different stalls selling the usual festival merchandise. You’ll be able to find what you want if you are after a flower crown, daft sunglasses or a hoody stating ‘I <3 Weed’.

As the ground in the park is flat, it was very wheelchair accessible. However, if it had rained and there was mud, it probably wouldn’t have been as accessible.

The music

Apart from Busted, I didn’t recognise anyone on Sunday’s lineup. When we arrived, we went over to the Rhythm Tent where we caught the end of Sonna Rele. We also saw Harris J which explained the massive amount of teenage girls crammed inside the tent.

Busted took to the stage at 5:45pm and we managed to make our way down to the front. The crowd was a mixed bag but a lot of people surrounding us were around our age. You could tell that these were all original Busted fans and had been following them since the early days.

Busted played for just over an hour and managed to cram 15 songs into their set, including all of the classics.

1. Air Hostess
2. What I Go to School For
3. ReunionP
4. Radio
5. Thunderbirds Are Go
6. Shipwrecked in Atlantis
7. Free Fallin'(Tom Petty cover)
8. Crashed the Wedding
9. On What You’re On
10. Sleeping With the Light On
11. MIA
12. You Said No
13. 3am
14. (Encore)Nineties
15. Year 3000

For £2, Godiva Festival 2019 was definitely worth going to. I’m excited to see who they have on the line up next year as they always have great bands.