Belladrum music festival sees rocking 'toons and tunes

Huge crowds have gathered for the third and final day of the Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival in the Highlands.

A record 25,000 tickets were sold this year, and the majority of festival-goers turned up on Saturday with Travis closing the three-day event.

A theme is set for every Belladrum and this weekend's was cartoons.

Among the fancy dress on display were Minions, Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Rugrats and an Inspector Gadget.

The Milne family from Nairn came as The Flintstones, and arrived at Bella on Thursday.

Mum Lindsay said: "It's been amazing. We thought it was going to be really wet, but the sun's come out."

Dad Chris said the best acts he had seen over the first two days included Hollywood actor and country singer-songwriter Kiefer Sutherland, as well as indie pop band Bastille.

Iain and Kirsty Smith, from Glasgow, described themselves as serial Belladrum attendees and had also thrown themselves into the cartoons theme.

"It's a brilliant festival - friendly and with a great line-up," said Iain, who was dressed head-to-toe as Dick Dastardly. He added: "As soon as the festival is over it is in the diary for next year."

Kirsty, dressed as Penelope Pitstop, said: "We made bits of our costumes ourselves, we just pulled them together."

Elsewhere on the site, a group of friends from London, Grantown-on-Spey and Aberdeen were rocking hand-made Simpsons outfits, while Mike and Susan, from Aberdeen, were channelling Scottish comic books as Oor Wullie and Minnie the Minx.

Saturday's headline performances at Bella, on the Belladrum Estate near Beauly, included Scouting for Girls and Travis.

Travis opened their Hot House set with their 2001 hit Sing, and continued to entertain the crowd with their greatest hits.

And happily for the massive audience gathered to see the band, whatever lie Fran Healy told when he was 17 did not result in rain on Saturday night.

On Friday night, singer-songwriter KT Tunstall paid tribute to Irish singer and activist Sinéad O'Connor during her set.

O'Connor, who died earlier this week at the age of 56, was best-known for her cover Nothing Compares 2 U. Tunstall sang a line from the song while performing on the main Hot Houe stage.

Earlier in the week tributes poured in for the "radical and incredible" O'Connor whose voice "cracked stone".

With folk singer Julie Fowlis, Tunstall also sang a duet of her own single Black Horse and the Cherry Tree.

Friday night's headline acts also included Bastille, whose frontman Dan Smith left the stage to join the crowd to sing a couple of the band's tracks.

The set featured a performance of No Angels, a mash-up cover of The xx's Angels and TLC's No Scrubs.

Bastille ended with their 2013-released hit Pompeii.

On Thursday organisers apologised for long waits to get into the site, which they said was caused by wet weather and hundreds of people arriving early.

They said the tickets sold was only a "very small percentage" increase on last year.

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