It was shaping up to be a hot one as our 7am ferry cruised out of Portsmouth and across the Solent to the Isle of Wight. The yachties were out in force, rolling in our wake as we passed the mouth of Southampton Water.

Passing Queen Victoria’s pretty Osborne House, we arrived early in Ryde and drove gleefully to the festival site, thinking we’d got the jump on all those suckers with the civilized sailing times.

At 9am, we joined the mile-long queue of vehicles entering the campsite. By the time we lugged our gear into the site, we struggled to find a dry, level pitch, and realised we would need to become very friendly with our neighbours if this whole experience was going to work out. The campsite was terrible – just a field full of cow dung with a leaky standpipe and a small row of already awful plastic portaloos. There were people camping with small children, who must have been regretting their decision already.

We bailed out of there and joined the long queue for wristbands in the performance area. Waiting with us were a motley cast of characters: ageing bikers, well-to-do couples in their 50’s with picnic baskets, hip young families, chavvy teenagers, the usual crusty jugglers and us.

6-pound beers in hand, we watched Groove Armada and the Stereophonics from a seat on the grass. Ignoring the campsite, this was the gentlest and most civilized festival I’d ever attended, and certainly the one with the widest age range. The music was great, but the atmosphere just wasn’t what I expected from the festival that spawned that legendary Hendrix take on the Star Spangled Banner.

Arriving back late at our grotty campsite, we accepted an invitation to an impromptu jam session with some hairy and suspiciously shiny-eyed old Who fans. We shared round the beers and played Magic Bus and Brown Eyed Girl till 3, when our neighbours couldn’t take any more.

To break out from the campsite, the next morning we drove around the postcard-perfect island’s winding roads. We stopped for a cream tea to take advantage of the café’s running water, and found half a dozen other refugees from the campsite sponge-bathing in the sinks!

It was another scorching day, so we headed back to lounge in the sun for the Manic Street Preachers’ afternoon set. That night, the Who made sense of the eclectic audience with a series of anthems that three generations sang along to. Finally, here was the atmosphere, though not the one I had expected.

Sunday’s Snow Patrol and Charlatans sets brought out the more familiar festival-going types, and then the multi-generational crowd was back for David Bowie as the weekend’s finale.
It was a fantastic festival, with a fabulous lineup, but the only thing reminiscent of its radical roots was the grungy facilities. It’s the Isle of Wight Festival, but not as you know it.