Swindon Film and Comic Con 2016

This past weekend was Swindon Film and Comic Con (not to be confused with Swind-Con that I went to earlier this year – different organisers) which was held at The Steam Museum, Swindon.

See Mr. Stay Puft watching over things in the background? 😉

I love smaller conventions, they’re a lot quieter and tend to be more personal. This one was very well organised, the staff were knowledgeable and helpful, we had a great day.

We went on Saturday and Sunday. On the Saturday, I had a photo shoot with Andrew Lee Potts and Hannah Spearitt from the UK tv show, Primeval as well as a dinosaur.

For those not familiar with the show, it follows a team of scientists who investigate temporal anomalies across the UK. Some locations include London, The Forest of Dean and Thorpe Park (theme park). Prehistoric and futuristic creatures enter through the anomalies and the team work together to send them back, as well as trying to stop the end of the world.

It’s a really good show. It also had a short lived US spin off… I didn’t like it.

Here’s my photo – we were told to look scared. I went for screaming! It’s a funny photo but I like it. 🙂

The Steam Museum is quite far from the town centre but it is right next door to the Outlet Village, so there were plenty of places to eat. We ate at “La Cantina” which had been put on inside the Steam Museum especially for the convention, for breakfast and went to Ed’s Easy Diner (which is an America style diner), in the Outlet Village, for lunch. Both were great and we’ll definitely be trying Ed’s diner again in the future.

It was a big venue and the way they had it laid out meant you saw a lot of the Steam Museum going around. The Steam Museum itself was really good with a fair amount of displays and many steam engines. I liked how the convention organisers had fitted their own displays along side them.

There were a fair few dealers, a cosplay competition, props to take photos of or photos with, Q&A sessions, a live version of ITV’s “The Chase” with two of the “chasers” (quiz masters) in attendance and a wide range of guests from television and film. It was probably the biggest local convention I’ve been too.

Outside there were some replica cars. See how many you can regonise.

Aside from Hannah Spearitt and Andrew Lee Potts, I met two guests from Only Fools and Horses and two actors from Guardians of the Galaxy. All were really nice, posed for photos and were happy to have a chat.

I didn’t buy much memorabilia at this convention but came away with some tombola prizes, a couple of pens and a Hama bead Doctor Who dream catcher.
A few photos from the convention – I took around 100! (click to see the full size image):-