Organisers of Forest Live at Westonbirt Arboretum could hardly have picked a better band to kick off this year's series than Stereophonics.

Known for their incendiary live performances, the Welsh rockers were the perfect booking for Thursday night's opener, with Paul Weller, Jack Savoretti and the Hacienda Classical to follow.

Given the status of the band it was no wonder tickets sold out in just 10 minutes, with fans far and wide eager to see them in a setting as stunning as the botanical garden, which is a 30-minute drive from Bristol.

A polished set jam-packed with hits was enough to make the 9,000 or so in attendance forget about the dreary weather - but a pathetic bar and poor organisation when it came to leaving the site took some shine off the overall night.

The bar was nowhere near big enough for a crowd of 9,000+

There must have been a few hundred people still queueing at the bar in the far corner of the field when Stereophonics kicked off with C'est La Vie, oblivious that the set had even begun.

This was a large-scale gig with nearly 10,000 people in attendance, yet the cash-only bar was the sort you'd expect to find at a village beer festival, with at least a 30-minute wait before you get your hands on a pint. Not only that but there wasn't even a sign to alert people that the marquee was a bar, which left quite a few people confused upon arrival.

For this reason it felt like the set didn't really get going until All in One Night, a few songs in, with the crowd singing the "oh oh" chorus along with frontman Kelly Jones, who was dressed in typically dapper fashion.

A mid-section of timeless classics including Have a Nice Day and Maybe Tomorrow took things up a few notches before a glorious rendition of Handbags and Gladrags, performed at the end of a gangway jutting out into the crowd to give things a more intimate feel.

The gangway which jutted out into the crowd was a nice touch

"We played this on the Jools Holland Show in 2001 and it went pretty big," said Jones before playing the iconic intro of the endearing ditty, first recorded by Mike d'Abo in 1970. Other interactions with the crowd were heartfelt shows of appreciation for buying tickets so quickly and for turning up, despite the "f***ing s**t weather".

"Ironically this one's called Sunny ," chirped Jones before the band launched into the Keep The Village Alive hit, which culminated with Jones' most impressive guitar solo of the night, before the set closed with a fantastic hat-trick of A Thousand Trees - as the band were surrounded by approximately 1,000 trees - Local Boy In the Photograph and The Bartender and the Thief .

A cover of Stevie Nicks' Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, which saw warm-up act The Wind and The Wave join the band on stage, sounded superb, with Patricia Lynn and Jones' vocals harmonising beautifully.

The crowd were in their element by this point, but of course the true highlight came in the form of an encore of Dakota, which had everyone singing along and jumping - even those who had brought camping chairs along with them.

It took many people around an hour to leave the car park

But then came the mass exodus of the car park, which was absolute chaos, as several disgruntled attendees pointed out on social media.

With only a few hapless marshals on hand to assist - far fewer than there were when cars arrived - it was a complete free-for-all with five lengthy queues of cars trying to merge into one in order to get to the elusive exit.

Of course queues were expected with such a mass of people all leaving at once, but this verged on the ridiculous and took many people a good hour to finally reach Bath Road, by which point Dakota felt like a distant memory.

Setlist

C'est La Vie

I Wanna Get Lost With You

Superman

All in One Night

Geronimo

Step On My Old Size Nines

Have a Nice Day

Maybe Tomorrow

I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio

Handbags and Gladrags

Hurry Up and Wait

Mr Writer

Sunny

Just Looking

Indian Summer

Stop Draggin' My Heart Around (Stevie Nicks cover)

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A Thousand Trees

Local Boy in the Photograph

The Bartender and the Thief

Encore:

Mr and Mrs Smith

Dakota