[T]housands of visitors flocked to Cumbria for the 2017 Keswick Mountain Festival. Poor weather failed to prevent festival goers enjoy a packed line-up of sporting events, big name speakers, live music and outdoor activities. There were some enforced disruptions to the programme, but event organisers worked hard to minimise those and visitors were rewarded with a storming set by live music headliner KT Tunstall on Saturday evening, in the best weather of the weekend.
On Sunday, high winds forced the event organisers to close the Festival Village on Crow Park and cancel the open water swimming events. Despite this, all other festival sporting events over the weekend went ahead, including trail races, triathlons, aquathlons (swim-run events), a cycling sportive and junior races. Most of the rest of the festival programme also proceeded as planned.
Nicola Meadley, Keswick Mountain Festival director, comments: “We know that we can’t control the weather, so always have contingency plans ready in case of challenging conditions, to ensure the safety of everyone involved. Overall, those plans worked very well and we were able to minimise changes to the schedule, though unfortunately the high winds did have an impact on Sunday. Visitors, sports event participants and exhibitors were really understanding and patient, and we’re very grateful to them for that. And I want to pay tribute to all of our team and the many volunteers, who responded brilliantly in some very difficult circumstances.
“Despite all of the challenges thrown at us by the weather, thousands of people clearly had a great time at this year’s Keswick Mountain Festival. There was a fantastic atmosphere in Crow Park for both nights of live music and once again we brought a large number of visitors from around the country to Keswick for the weekend.”
Advance ticket sales for events at this year’s Keswick Mountain were significantly up on 2016, with increased capacity on the sporting events. There was also unprecedented interest in the live music, which, along with KT Tunstall, featured Cast, The Christians, The Peatbog Faeries, Noasis, Absent Average and local acts Lee Hawker and Erin Collins. Big name speakers in the Theatre by the Lake included Sir Chris Bonington, Alan Hinkes, Nicky Spinks, Jasmin Paris and Lauren Steadman. The dedicated festival campsite was bigger than ever and the Festival Village was packed with exhibitors, taster activities and food and drink outlets. Money was raised throughout the event for the National Trust, the festival’s official charity partner.
The 2017 Keswick Mountain Festival was backed by several event sponsors and partners: Blacks was retail partner, Timothy Taylor’s was official bar sponsor and Salomon was on board for the second year running, this time sponsoring the hike programme, featuring over a dozen guided walks, as well as the 50km, 25km, 10km and 5km trail races. In addition, Peugeot sponsored the music stage, Blacksticks sponsored the triathlons and Trail magazine was once again on board as a festival media partner.
To find out more about the event, visit www.keswickmountainfestival.co.uk, or follow the festival on social media – @KeswickFestival on Twitter and Instagram, and at www.facebook.com/KeswickMountainFestival.
