Posted By Archie on 16 Apr 2009 06:19 PM 
... has to either be somewhere with guaranteed sunshine and dry weather or some budget accomodation nearby.

That excludes all Irish festivals, then. Head for the continent, combine a camping holiday with cheap tickets for a local festival somewhere.

Barcelona has a festival (not the electro one), name escapes me, that takes place in the city, at the docks. Hostels and budget hotels and of course, sunshine a plenty!

Do you mean the Primavera festival? I've been to both that & the Sonar (the electronica) festivals. Both of them are class - Barca is such a cool place.

Barcelona sounds great...any more details on when it's on etc? What's Sonar, I've never heard of it?

Plenty of cool stuff on in all corners of France, like every summer. Plug plug: I believe the CLUAS Foreign Correspondent (Paris) will be blogging about them over the coming weeks, and his blog archives from last summer have links and details of annual festivals like Eurockéenes in the east and Les Vieilles Charrues in Brittany (this year's headliner: B. Springsteen).

http://www.thespacelab.tv/spaceLAB/theSHOW/MusicFestivals/theSHOW--MusicEvent-Sonar.htm http://www.sonar.es/ tha tha tha tha tha tha tha

Hey guys. For the last few years my mates and I have been going to rockwerchter which is in the town of werchter in Belgium. Weather has been pretty good-any rain for the last few years has been an intense shower followed by the sun coming out. Musically the line up is normally a solid rock line up. Check out www.rockwerchter.be.
Unfortunately this year they're fielding Oasis as a headliner, even the appearance of nine inch nails has not been enough to make up for it! So we've looked into a couple of others

Sziggit, a week long festival on a small island between twin cities Buda and Pest in Hungary, is a strong contender. there's also still time to catch their budget ticket deal which expires at the end of the month; a seven day ticket with camping will set you back a mere €150, put in line with alcohol prices over there you've got yourself a recession friendly party going on! www.szigetfest.co.uk/home

We also looked at benicassim, outside barcelona, over a week long with three or four days of music in the middle. Serious sunshine, lots of beach parties.. more bloody oasis though! http://benicassimfestival.co.uk/

EXIT really looks good, it was started as a protest to the Milosovic regime so you've got the whole 'part of history' thing going on. Four days of strong international and a lot of good local acts and, well, cheap as chips! The weather in Serbia will be savage as well. http://eng.exitfest.org/

The probable winner though is likely to be the Open'er Festival in Gdansk, Poland. 7 stages, more than 120 acts, a sweet line up. And a four day ticket with camping pass is an astonishing 320polish zlots! That indeed, according to xe.com today, is just under €72. Coupled with the fantastic weather at Polands top coastal retreat and Mr. O'Leary's fantastic airplane charges you have to ask...where else would you be going??! http://www.opener.pl/en

Mark, first up - welcome aboard CLUAS!

I was at Werchter last year and it was truly excellent. Both in terms of line up and organisation.

As for the Open'er Festival in Gdansk check out the CLUAS Review of last year's Open'er festival (which, I note, is turning up as the no. 3 result on google for a search for 'Open'er Festival Gdansk').

Thanks for the welcome! I'm just getting used to forums, here's to many more posts to come!

Great review, fair play to Mr Lawlor, I got lost in the read!
One i forgot to mention, that my Polish mates are always on about is the Polish Woodstock, there's normally no huge names, but it is free, and it is run by a guy called Jurek Owsiak (Off-sheck) who's just a fantastic and inspiring activist who's activities have raised about $100mil for polish hospitals over the last decade. From what I'm told there's about half a million attend each year! (http://www.en.wosp.org.pl/woodstock)