press invite
Stowaway Festival (formerly ‘The Festival of Beer’) was my discovery of 2022. I absolutely LOVED this ultra safe, ultra clean, ultra relaxed, ultra FUN little gem of a festival which is held around 1.5 hours outside London, not far from Milton Keynes. Honestly I was so impressed with everything, read on to find out why:
The location and festival site
Stowaway Festival is located on the Blackpit Brewery site, in Stowe, Buckinghamshire. It’s a stone’s throw from the Silverstone race track, and because of this, the site hosts the Silverstone official campsite during the year when there are big races on. It is a wonderfully flat site, with huge fields for both campervans and the main campsite. There is a gorgeous lake which the arena sits next to, and a set of buildings that is the year round taproom for the brewery, that during festival hosts a lovely large indoor bar with seating.
Further into the arena there is a large woodland which hosts the Roller Disco, the Hidden Woods stage (the second biggest stage) and then lots of hidden wonders in amongst the trees including a karaoke caravan, a vinyl-only mini stage, and a bushcraft workshop. At night, there are incredible light installations to discover amongst the trees.
Back to the main arena area, there is the Harbour stage (the third stage, next to the lake), and then of course the Main Stage which is a full size, immersive, big sound rig stage. They also have a cricket pitch, and a kids area with pirate ships, fairground rides, and tree climbing.
The best way to describe it is that it is big enough to properly explore and enjoy, but small enough to easily pop back to camp, or not lose your mates. The layout is honestly perfect, with no sound bleed between stages, easy to nip to the bar or toilets, and nice big areas of grass to run around or sit down and relax with friends/family.
We were staying in the camper van field in Betsy our Volkswagen Type 2 camper van (the baby blue one in the middle of this picture). We put up our event shelter between our van and our friends, and had a great set up. There was so much space. The ONLY problem here was that there were no toilets in the campervan field, we had to walk a good 5-7 mins through the main festival gate into the campsite to use those toilets. It meant quite a sprint when you woke up in the morning needing a wee! I’ve been told that this has been brought up by lots of campervanners though and will be rectified for 2023. It says something that this is genuinely the only site-related thing that needed fixing. Everything else: compost toilets, lots of showers, lots of water points, no queues, enough bars and food, easy walkways… all perfect.
Music line up
I’ll start with the Stowaway Festival line up poster for 2022:
I’m not going to go into huge detail about everyone we saw, but to list off our favourites:
Nightmares On Wax, Roni Size, Luke Una, The Staves, Chez de Milo, and Elder Island were all wonderful. We saw some more music by just wandering around the site but I can’t remember names! However the one set I do want to pull out and talk about it:
Orbital. I’ve seen Orbital before I’m sure of it… but something about this set was absolutely mindblowing. They drafted in a huge extra floor package, with loads of beams and LED screens to add a hugely impressive lightshow to their already awesome set. The Stowaway main stage was big and impressive, and with this additional staging it was genuinely epic. We had our group of 6 friends all together in the crowd, and everyone around us was so lovely, we had chatted before the set and then all enjoyed the experience together. Orbital were my second favourite bit of Stowaway Festival, with the first being…
Ben’s amazing disco/house set
Ben Virgo, my other half, was booked to play a set at the Harbour stage on Saturday night. He was a bit nervous but we were all so excited. It was at 8pm on the Saturday, so almost the same time as the headliner Quantic started. When we arrived the tent was almost empty, and Ben went behind the decks to say hi to Worm Disco Club who he was taking over from. He started his set with a Tropical Disco number, and then for two hours mixed the most incredible disco/house/funk set. I had not actually heard him play the whole set practicing at home, so I was so proud of how brilliant he was!
As I mentioned, his set started with an empty tent. He had never played a festival before and is very much an unknown DJ. He has done zero self promotion (🙄), so nobody knows his name at all. Not one person would have looked at the line up, saw the name “Ben Virgo”, and said “oh wow I’ve heard of him I’m going to go check him out”. We, his friends, had tried to spread the word by telling people the first two days of the festival that we met that they should come along, but that was all the promotion he had. Within half an hour of starting his set, the tent was starting to fill up. By one hour in, the tent was rammed with people absolutely loving it. This is amazing because all these people were only there because they must have walked past, heard the music, and said ‘this sounds great we should stay and dance here!’. Even the bar staff said it was the best set they had heard all weekend. I was so proud, it was beyond brilliant.
He then played again on Sunday for THREE WHOLE HOURS at the Roller Disco! It was more relaxed but lots of fun. Ben was even able to play over an hour of vinyl. We are hoping he will be invited to play again!
Activities and things to do
On top of all the awesome music available, there are heaps of activities at Stowaway for both adults and kids, and what was mind-blowing for me is that (almost) all of them were free – aka included in the ticket price. This is an absolute godsend if there are lots of you / you’ve brought the whole family. You only have to pay for food, drinks, and merch/festival accessories on site.
Here’s what was on offer for free in 2022 at Stowaway Festival:
- Paddleboarding / Canoeing on the Lake
- Lake swimming
- Roller Disco
- Tree climbing (kids only)
- Bushcraft (kids only)
- Karaoke
- Team Cricket
- Fairground rides
- Drag story time (aimed at kids but some adults were watching too)
- Live Comedy – this was all afternoon on the Sunday on the Hidden Woods stage and had Russell Kane as the headliner
- Kids Construction Area
- Kids Pirate Ships
And the two paid for activities were:
- The Alfresco Spa – lakeside Hot Tub sessions
- Bottomless Brunch at Seven Lucky Gods – (but I guess this counts under food and drink!)
We only personally partook in the fairground rides, the Roller Disco, the Alfresco Spa, and the Bottomless Brunch, however it is my biggest regret that we didn’t either lake swim AND/OR paddle board, so I’m making that my mission for the 2023 Stowaway Festival! I’ll talk about the brunch in the food section shortly, but first some of the other bits:
The Alfresco Spa Hot Tubs – these were a gorgeous way to rejuvenate yourself! We went on Sunday lunchtime with a few friends, and absolutely loved the large wooden tubs with a lake view. There were changing rooms, and a lovely couple of hot showers to wash yourself off both before and after. We enjoyed an hour in the hot tubs, and were able to buy beer, wine, and water right from in our tub! The team running the area were lovely. Honestly one of the highlights of the weekend! The Alfresco team have set up a spa retreat in the West Country – 20 mins from Bristol.
The Roller Disco – this was a cool little roller rink / stage nestled between the woods. Ben had a three hour set here on Sunday afternoon, so we went down for him to spin some disco tunes, and the rest of us to strap on some roller skates and attempt to hold our own on the floor. I definitely didn’t stray far from the edge as my balance is quite shocking 😂 but it was tonnes of fun. Some of the kids were amazing! The last hour of Ben’s set, they held a Skate-Off, and I definitely exited the rink by this point, but was seriously impressed by the skills on show.
Food and drink at Stowaway Festival
There were some excellent options for both food and drink, and I was particularly happy to see that while they did indeed have an impressive selection of beers (being sited on a brewery!) they did also have some great non-beer options, including a separate gin bar, and yummy “Served” seltzers, and they also did a ‘house cocktail’ of tequila and pink grapefruit soda at all bars. For the no-alcohol drinkers, I loved that they had not only Peroni 0% beer, but also a Ruby Aperitif and Tonic mocktail, along with standard soft drinks. There was a bar at every stage, so you never had to go far for refreshment!
For food, there really was something for everyone. Our favourites were the Jerk Chicken, the Raclette, and the Fried Chicken burgers. But they also had pizza, a dessert van, a veggie/vegan place, a steak & chips place, and a full Asian restaurant from Seven Lucky Gods – who hosted bottomless Asian-style brunches during the day, but also had an all day menu with sit down and order vibes. We did the bottomless brunch on the Saturday at 10am – so were slightly tired/hungover! But the food was amazing – Japanese style breakfast rice bowls, so bacon, sausage, omelette, rice, spring onion, chilli etc, and the mimosas/prosecco top ups were plentiful. We will definitely do it again next time we go!
In summary, the vibes at Stowaway Festival were immaculate…
If you want a festival that is easy going, relaxed, no stress, but also tonnes of fun, and reasonably priced, this is it.
There’s so much space and the camping fields are flat – you can set up a nice big camping area for your group no problem. The facilities were brilliant – plentiful and clean. The line up was impeccably curated, with the right artists on the right stage at the right time. It was so easy to wander around, to find new places in the woods, to nip back to your tent/camper to get another layer of clothing, and to get to the bar or toilets from a stage and back.
See you there in 2023? Check the Stowaway website to find out when the line up and tickets are released!
Photos all either taken by me, or provided by Stowaway and taken by Ania Shrimpton