Disappointed!

[Caran]

We went to a food and drink festival at Princess Anne's place, Gatcombe park today. It was in an enormous field. Cost £10 to get in. Lots of stalls all around the edge of the field. Majority were market type stalls selling clothes, jewellery, art any thing but food. We found one stall selling sausages that gave a sample. There was a fun fair, a very loud band.
There was a bar selling champagne at £12 a glass or £60 a bottle.
There were a couple of stalls selling honey but only sample was to smell the jar!
Not my idea of a food fair at all.

[Spicerack]

Did they have cutlery, caran. ;-)

[Caran]

Very funny Spicerack.

[Mamyalynne]

You were not alone in your disappointment according to their Facebook page Caran, I know that's no real consolation.

[Buenchico]

From the event's Facebook page:

1. "Returned an hour ago from a dreadful evening. We thought we were going to a good festival and all we found was a field shiwing a rugby match with ear splittingky loud commentary. The foid was a kinky type if takeaway. Pizzas, fish and chips, burgers, chips. I may have well stayed at home as the takeaways would have been better. Champagne at £12 for a tiny glass. We expected local and not so local interesting food and there was not a whiff of it. A dreadful band followed then a DJ. At this stage we left. Don't go if you are expecting good food . You wont get any. It was a complete waste of money".

2: "Overall very disappointing and I wish I hadn’t bothered. Not really a food festival. Children’s entertainment very limited. Rugby commentary blasted far too loudly across whole site for 2 hours. First band very mediocre but did improve followed by DJ act that didn’t fit with the event. Ok perhaps as a place to go and meet friends but an expensive way to do it."

3. "Utter rubbish. Perplexed how and why this was even marketed as a “food and drink festival”.
All boring, generic fayre stands that you see at any free to enter town markets around the place.
Unless you really want a £160 fashion boiler suit! Actually laughable…
No produce to purchase- unless you want manuka honey from New Zealand. That’s it.

The people that paid for only a day ticket stayed on without challenge (so why did I pay extra for the evening?). Which was also rubbish…
The beer was nice! Yet, overpriced to normal pub prices for the same brew.
Nothing else locally sourced or even from the Shire.
The only reason we stayed longer than a couple of hours (pushing it) was a pre-booked taxi we couldn’t re-arrange unfortunately.

Save your money and time.
Don’t bother at all.
Go to any normal market any week of the year and actually support local.
Feel sorry for the exhibitors that got conned in to it too. You all must be fuming.

The best bit was the rugby- viewed on 32” TVs.
What a huge disappointment to a potentially brilliant event."

4. "Non Event of the year - Very disappointed that the stands closed at 5:00pm. Only entertainment on arrival was televised Lions v. Springbocks (Could have watched at home), followed by mediocre band that nobody seemed interested in. Arrived 6:45, bored by 7:30 lukewarm food so left at 8:00pm. Not what we expected and a total waste of time and money."

I suggest addressing your complaints to Peter Phillips. It was his idea!

[Caran]

Thanks for that Chris, summed it up nicely.

[douglas9401]

Odd that a man of the people should miscalculate so badly and serve up what he imagines the proles like.

[Peter Pedant]

customer feed back - write and tell them.

I did that to Athelhampton House and it burnt down the next year ( I ws not in the county !)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athelhampton

[pastafreak]

I would imagine it costs a bomb to have stall, and may have been deemed as a risky investment for many of the usual suppliers for such an event...all due to covid.
We've had a annual West Country food and drink festival for a number of years here. But of course not last year, and no signs of it this year. Such a shame.