Planet Rock decided to see the Winter off in rocking style with the inaugural three-day Winters End Festival held at Sandford Holiday Park.

Such an honour for Dorset to be the venue for this new festival and Sandford Holiday Park was a great choice of venue with a fantastic stage area with great acoustics.

Hand of Dimes opened the proceedings on Friday evening with a great set to get everyone in the mood, followed by Tilt and Aaron Keylock both preceeding the Legendary Bernie Marsden.

The ex Whitesnake guitarist and co writer of some of the biggest hits went down a storm. The headliners that night were Tosaland who again did an incredible set which the crowd lapped up.

Saturday started when Sugarman Sam and the Voodoo men opened the full days music.

Next up one of the local bands, Voodoo Vegas who were incredible, crowd pleasing and gained a lot of new fans. They were followed by more great sets from King Creature, Touchstone and RavenEye.

Massive Wagons came on after a short break and were followed by the great Cats In Space. Chantel Mcgregor was up next. What an incredible talent, amazing voice and great guitars. The set was a mix of good heavy rock with a couple of prog style songs which worked so well.

Legendary Scottish rockers Gun were penultimate band of the evening and they came on stage with a massive rush of energy. They played all the crowd favourites, Let it Shine, Word Up, Better Days, interspersed with newer tracks, Dante Gizzi has the presence that commanded a lot of interaction with the crowd, his voice is amazing.

Paul Anthony joined them onstage as backing vocalist on Everyones a winner. The encore which included a cover of the Beastie Boys Fight for your right had everyone singing along.

As one of the best bands around at the moment, Inglorious were well deserving of the headline slot.

Nathan James is a frontman who has it, he is a frontman in the vein of David Coverdale, Axl Rose or Freddie Mercury, a showman in the true sense.

Not only a fantastic vocalist but he can enthral a crowd. The band gel together so well, new guitarist Drew Lowe works so well with lead guitarist Andreas Erikson and bassist Colin Parker and the drummer with the coolest name in rock Phil Beaver is a powerhouse.

They played tracks from the debut Album Inglorious including High Flying Gypsy, Until I die and the bluesy Holy Water. We were also treated to tracks from the new album which show this is a band who are going to be around for a long time, selling out arenas and packing stadiums.

Sunday morning dawned and another local band, the fabulous Western Sand had the what seemed hard task of waking up a slightly delicate crowd.

They burst onto stage with Dark Horse waking the crowd up, storming through a set featuring Let the hammer fall, Mississippi Queen, Welcome to the Badlands and Nothing to Lose with Tyler, Nathan, Findlay and Jimmy showing why they were the perfect choice to get the crowd in the move for the day.

Welsh band Fireroad followed in the same vein, everyone was moving along to the great music with powerful vocals from Richard Jones, second hand soldier especially is very powerful. These are a band to watch as again they will be headlining very soon.

The day continued with great performances from Saiichi Sugiyama Band, Skam, and Dirty Thrills before a short break. Vega kicked off the evenings entertainment in style followed by the great Stone Broken who are just back from touring with Glen Hughes.

Dare were the next up, and they were amazing, Darrren Wharton is still as good as ever. Headliners were the incredible The Answer, they had everyone joining in and were the perfect finishing act for this festival.

Planet Rock have introduced this as the perfect festival for the end of the winter months. Fingers crossed it comes back to Sandford next year again.

Louise Makey