Our Weekend Trip to see Ozzy

Our Weekend Trip to see

At the

Friday afternoon 25th May saw Andy rushing off from work to collect his son's George(13) and Charlie (11) along with their Rock'n'Roll skate board pal Joe Jeffs for a Saturday of Heavy Metal Mayhem at the Milton Keynes National Bowl.

After following duff directions and a wrong map they eventually found the Holiday Inn they had booked into just of the M1. The Bar was still open and as there were no other customers in sight (They must have heard we had booked in) the barmaid gave us free reign on the Sky satellite TV controller and so it was late night Kung Fu films with Cokes and Lagers all round. At last we went up to our room. As the hotel was very new all of us thought the chrome fittings and high quality rooms were the business - but we were burned out and it was so late our Rock'n'Roll plans of chucking a telly out of the 3rd floor window didn't really materialise - All us raging rockers were fast asleep within minutes of tucking ourselves up in the soft and comfy beds.

Next morning we woke up rejuvenated and excited about seeing our heavy metal heroes. We filled up on a massive buffet breakfast - when they said it was continental we made it about the size of Europe with a few pints of fresh fruit juice, bowls of cereal, multiple trips back for croissant and pain au chocolate washed down with lashings of real coffee.

We headed off down the M1 and the nearer we got to Milton Keynes the more minibuses and cars full of tattooed Rock Chicks and body pierced Mohegan's/Punk Rockers we passed. We finally got parked up collected our tickets and went into "The Bowl". Phew!! - 11am and already Raging Speedhorn were cranking it up, blasting out from the main stage. The festival atmosphere and excitement was building up and getting better by the hour as the first few bands played through to early afternoon in the lovely bright sunshine.

George on the left , Joe in the middle and Charlie on the right with the main stage in the background.

As the weather hotted even more, so did the music.

Papa Roach shifted straight into top gear as soon as they came on stage and were greeted by fantastic reception from the audience.

Take our word for it - Papa Roach rocked from start to finish and gave one of, if not the best performance of the day.

If you don't believe us just look at Andy & Charlie below!

George and Joe then decided they wanted to go autograph hunting and endured a long one and a half hour crush to get inside the "Kerrang signing tent".

As you can see these photos are proof that their wait was worth while!

Coby from Papa Roach is the mean looking tattooed geezer and the nice lad in the red shirt below is our Joe Jeffs!

Pictures were taken by George who was shaking so much with excitement he could hardly get the camera out of his pocket.

Afterwards George and Joe could not be parted from their autographs.

Joe said it was better than winning a million pounds on the lottery. Their happy faces on the day showed they really did mean it too! The rest of the day they visibly clutched their Kerrang carrier bags with the signings in so their was no chance of loosing them.

Amazingly, even after all this excitement, the day still had plenty more left for us and the thoroughly outrageous Slipknot lived beyond every expectation and " Wait and Bleed is like a lullaby compared to most of their other stuff!

As evening fell into darkness, the mighty Black Sabbath really had left themselves with some hard acts to follow. We wondered after all this wether they could still prove to us they were still the real "Mothers of Metal"

We needn't have worried! Ozzy, Geezer, Bill & Tony still pulled it off and the audience loved every minute. Ozzy looked good and sounded great, keeping the whole thing lively and energetic. This was a real blast from the past and we even got the Harmonica solo in "The Wizard" from Ozzy himself.

After a tumultuous on chore the night finished with a massive and explosive barrage of fire works which couldn't even fail to impress the most battle hardened long haired, leather clad rockers! It seemed like the hole damned box was going off at once and drew huge applause to round off a perfect day of ear blasting, head banging, decibels and watts.