Camp Bestival: Kindness of strangers saves mum's festival

Clare Cunningham and her daughters thought they would have to head home after the first night

A family's festival experience was saved by the kindness of strangers when their tent was destroyed by a storm.

Camp Bestival in Dorset saw heavy rain and winds of up to 75mph after it opened on Thursday, as Storm Evert lashed south-west England.

By Friday morning the Cunningham's tent was completely destroyed and the family thought they would have to head home.

But the people camping next door invited them to stay and arranged a tent for them to sleep in.

Clare Cunningham, from Frome, Somerset, was at the festival with her two daughters. She told the BBC: "A tent pole had snapped and ripped through the canvas, making our tent completely unusable.

"We were pretty devastated and we hadn't had any sleep that night either."

She went to speak to the festival's on-site welfare team who gifted her a small two-man tent.

Gale force winds on Thursday night destroyed the family's tent

"But by the time we got back to where our tent was, the family next to us had actually rearranged their whole sleeping set-up and made an entire tent available to us - it was pretty amazing.

"We really wouldn't have been able to carry on with the festival and we couldn't believe how kind these people were.

'Above and beyond'

She said the large family from Camberley, Surrey, "went above and beyond what they needed to do".

The mum of two explained: "It wasn't simply that they let us stay in their tent, they made us so welcome - we sat with them, we spent time with them, we ate with them, we went out partying with them.

Thousands turned up for the family event this year after 2020's festival was cancelled due the pandemic.

Camp Bestival curator Rob da Bank said "robust" measures were in place to deal with both coronavirus and the weather.