The Tropical Pressure Festival, set against the picturesque backdrop of Porthtowan and the rolling Cornish countryside at Mount Pleasant Eco Park in Cornwall, is a vibrant celebration of global music, arts, and culture. 

Held annually, this festival has carved out a niche for itself by showcasing an eclectic mix of world music genres, creating a melting pot of sounds and rhythms that captivate attendees from across the UK and beyond.

We attended this brilliant festival held between July 12th and 14th 2024 as a family of four (the children were 9 years old and 12 years old). It was a vibrant mix of cultures, infectious music, and sunshine. You could immerse yourself in global music, delicious food, and a truly inclusive atmosphere.  

Read on to explore my many colourful photos showcasing the festival, our honest thoughts as a family of four and a few videos to hear a sample of the types of music you can expect.

Enjoy!

Tropical Pressure Festival 2024: My Honest Family Review

We arrived on Friday evening, leaving after the children had finished school as the festival is approximately a 40-minute drive from our home, so not too far at all.

The festival was well signposted and we were quickly directed to the family camping area, for which we had paid slightly more to be positioned. The family camping area benefited from a large plot suitable for a car/camper and a tent. While we couldn’t fit our (huge) family tent and Bongo campervan on the pitch size, we were able to fit our Bongo and awning. This was a good set-up as the children slept one-up and one-down in our poptop campervan, and my husband and I slept in the awning as though it were a tent!

I have no idea if the roads were busier and the queues longer to enter at the start of the day, as the festival opened at 10am on the Friday, but when we arrived around 5pm we did not have to wait at all. This could be because we had the family camping as the main car park for those with standard camping (tents only) was in another location.

The festival is renowned for being small (for a festival at least) with only 3000 attendees, making everything easily accessible such as parking, finding a camping spot, collecting wristbands, purchasing food, drinks and going to the toilet! Something we very much appreciated after we hated queuing for ridiculous lengths of time at the last festival we attended.*

*(This was Vegan Campout in 2021 where we had to queue for up to one hour each time for the food trucks, it was insane! They had massively increased capacity since our 2019 Vegan Campout visit, but seemingly had forgotten to increase the number of toilets or vendors!)

Vegan-Friendly Food at Tropical Pressure

One of the best things, for us, at Tropical Pressure is the food stalls are only allowed to sell plant-based food. As we are a vegan family, this is perfect!

Not only did we experience the festival for the music, but I saw it as a vegan food festival too where we didn’t have to scour the menus to find the vegan food options, but we could pick whatever we wanted off every menu – amazing!

There was lots of choice when it came to food from crepes to crumpets, Thai to Indian, burgers and fries to salad, dirty fries to mezze boxes.

While we couldn’t try everything (though we tried our best!), our favourite food stall was Tam’s Kitchen which sold a selection of burgers, seitan tenders and loaded fries. Well, that was mine and Ben’s favourite stall, but for the kids it was the crepe stall and the crumpet stall!

Other food we tried included a salad box, pizza and curry. Oh yes, the pizza! The pizza was also amazing – a mushroom formaggi! The first time I’ve had a four-cheese vegan pizza and it was SO good.

If I had one tiny bit of feedback for future Tropical Pressure festivals, it would be to have a juice and smoothie stall. We quite fancied a really refreshing healthy drink at times and a juice bar would have been perfect. As well as a kombucha bar!

For the food alone, being 100% vegan, we would return to this festival. Nothing better than sitting in the sun listening to live music and DJs while chomping sown on delicious (and mostly naughty) vegan food.

The Tropical Pressure food stalls in 2024 included:

• MY MUM MAKES: Authentic Thai Food
• TAMS KITCHEN: Burgers & loaded fries
• TRULY CRUMPTIOUS: Sweet & savoury topped crumpets
• PLANTUGESE: Portugese cuisine
• OOOMAMAI: Sweet & savoury ravioli
• SHEPHERD’S ICE CREAM: Vegan ice cream
• CHIP HOP: Chips!
• CINNAMON FERN: Vegan crepes
• MANIC ORGANIC: Plant-based whole-foods
• CASITA: Mexican food
• THE CHIC PEA: Falafel, wraps & mezze boxes
• FLOUR POWER PIZZA: Vegan Pizza
• HABIBI’S: Salad boxes & wraps
• THYME AND TIDE / CHILLI SHACK: Vegan chilli box, fishless finger sandwich, tempura cauliflower & fishless taco
• STREET FOOD SOUTH WEST: Cauliflower shawarma wrap, vegan lamb minted kofta, Butternut squash Moroccan curry & Moroccan loaded potatoes

Eco-Friendly Location and Values

One of the reasons the festival vendors are only allowed to serve vegan-friendly food (or 100% plant-based food), is because they want to commit to being the most eco-friendly festival and believe this way of eating supports that.

Also, the venue at Mount Pleasant Ecological Park in Porthtowan is a sustainable event space.

As well as supporting plant-based eating, the festival had numerous recycling bins dotted about, so you were never far from being able to recycle or compost your waste. This meant for a very clean and tidy festival experience.

Only twice did I notice some strewn litter, and many times I noticed litter pickers about the festival. I was even able to watch staff feed the hot composter with the food waste from the festival at one point!

How was Tropical Pressure sustainable?

• Encourages people to bike ride. Get a free pint if you ride your bike to the festival.
• Food waste added to the hot composter and used on the plants at the venue.
• Pints are served in reusable cups (£1 per cup).
• Only plant-based food served.
• Beach clean-ups were organised and attended by festival goers.
• Multiple recycling bins around the festival.

Stunning Sunsets

Luckily we had (almost) clear skies and sunshine on the Saturday. The Sunday was overcast and the Friday was a mixture. Only a small patch of rain on the Sunday morning before we woke up, although Ben thinks it was just dew, but the tent was quite wet and dripping!

We were surprised to leave our tent at one point to make our way back to the festival after a pitstop to get changed and be greeted by this incredible sky:

Activities For All Ages at Tropical Pressure

I’m definitely all about the vegan eateries and the music when it comes to festivals. Chilling, mooching about, browsing the stores, kicking back and relaxing! But for some people, they love the activities, the wellness and joining in with the group music. if that’s your thing, then there’s a load of stuff to keep you entertained at Tropical Pressure!

There were various locations around the festival, like Jupiter’s Yard with activities for adults to take part in:

And, for children, there was a whole section dedicated to storytelling, crafts, circus skills and even a giant puppet that was quite mesmerizing to watch as the children could control the hands and head making it dance to the beats!

Our children absolutely loved the circus equipment they could try out, particularly the pois, diablos and hula-hoops. They’d have played there all day if they could. I’d recommend the festival leave this Sticks and Balls section up as a permanent feature next time as it wasn’t always there and all the kids LOVED it! We will now be buying my son a diablo as he was obsessed, spending around 2-3 hours practicing over the entire festival until he could do it.

Chill Out Areas

There were many areas to relax at the festival with two large open-air undercover festival tents next to the main Roots Arena Stage, plenty of outside space to sit on the grass, two areas with benches and firepits, indoor seating on benches and some picnic benches near the food stalls. We always found somewhere with plenty of room to sit down when needed.

Music at Tropical Pressure

There was an eclectic mix of global music at the festival celebrating the vibrant cultures of Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean.

We had been recommended this festival for its music, hearing that it was very positive and uplifting. There was no mainstream music which suited us down to the ground, instead, we enjoyed music from steel drum bands to reggae, and choirs to traditional tribal music such as traditional GoGo music from a tribe in Tanzania.

Though we didn’t know a single person on the lineup, there was a lot of music we loved.

We made a rooky mistake though, and completely forgot to pack the kids’ ear defenders. They’re not good with loud music, so we were unable to stay for too long near any loud music. We will remember next year!

Here’s the lineup, some photos, videos and a Spotify playlist for a taste of the music:

How much did it cost for a family of four to attend Tropical Pressure?

Overall we spent almost £800 as a family of four for the whole weekend, or rather 48 hours, oops!

Our tickets and family camping were just over £400. We took £200 cash as spending money, but quickly ran out!

You can definitely spend less by taking your own food and drinks (you can’t take your own alcohol into the festival though, only the campsite), but we wanted to experience all the vegan food and drink at every mealtime (and snack in between) so went all out on having whatever we wanted… and our bank balance certainly showed it afterwards!)

We had an absolute blast though and plan on going next year too, making the most of the food vendors and music. I think if we went to more festivals each year, we’d be more careful with our money, but as this was our only one and first in three years, we wanted to buy whatever we wanted and not be budgeted.

There was a merchandise van, our daughter bought a tote bag. Our son chose some sunglasses, in fact, he ended up choosing a pair as a treat from us and then bought two more pairs with his pocket money. There were lots of clothing stalls to browse with fun festival gear and alternative clothing.

No dogs allowed at Tropical Pressure

One important thing to note, for dog owners, is there are no dogs allowed at Tropical Pressure. While this may be offputting to dog lovers who want to bring their pooch, it was perfect for us as our daughter suffers from cynophobia (an irrational fear of dogs), so she felt super relaxed all weekend.

It also meant a good night’s sleep… we went camping earlier in the year and were kept up by a dog barking constantly!

So for us, it made for a better experience for our circumstances, but obviously it might not suit all dog owners.

Even More Things To Do at Tropical Pressure…

There was so much going on that we didn’t even take part in. Partly because we went with our kids who we had to keep entertained, but we were eyeing up lots of activities for next time or in the future when the kids can go off by themselves or when we can even go kid-free one day!

Such activities included a shuttle bus (every 20 minutes I believe) to Porthtowan Beach, a beach clean, saunas, massages, drumming, dancing, yoga, singing, a silent disco, DJs until 2am each evening, an open-mic tent… the list goes on!

Find Out More About Tropical Pressure

To find out more about Tropical Pressure festival and when tickets are released, visit their official website at https://www.tropicalpressure.co.uk/