Wakestock (Wales)

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Wakestock was Europe's largest wakeboard music festival, combining the cultures of music and wakeboarding. It was held on the Llŷn Peninsula in Wales, in between Pwllheli and Llanbedrog.

Founded by Mark Durston, the festival began in Abersoch, north Wales back in 2000, when it was a wakeboard contest with a party in a car park for 800 people, and from then on played host to some of the industry's leading bands and DJs, along with the biggest wakeboard competition in Europe. In 2008 50% of the festival was sold to Kilimanjaro Live aka KiliLive.com. In 2010 the festival entered its second decade and become part of the World Wakeboard Series. After the 2010 festival founder Mark Durston took an exit to work on other projects with full ownership then taken on by Kilimanjaro Live.^[1]

The festival was split over three sites - the main festival site at Penrhos, Pwllheli Marina hosts the main wakeboard competition and Abersoch Bay hosts the Big Air Classic competition. The festival prides itself as being at the foot of the Snowdonia Mountains and looks out over Cardigan Bay.

The festival had its own wakeboard 'Pool Gap' that allows the wakeboarders to showcase the sport up on the festival site. The Pool Gap consisted of two pools containing a total of 200,000 gallons of water connected by street style handrails that the wakeboarders slid along whilst being towed by an overhead cable system.

In February 2015 it was announced on Twitter and Facebook that the festival would not be held that year, but would return for 2016.^[2] In 2016 the festival was cancelled again. Organisers said, "It isn’t necessarily the case that Wakestock will never happen again but a significant level of investment in terms of time and money will need to take place ... before any commitment takes place."^[1] As of 2017 there have been no further announcements and the official website has been closed.