Festival reviews

Many of my friends are shocked when I tell them that me and the girls are spending nearly every weekend until the second week in September at a festival... 'What?! you are taking your girls to a festival?!!'
Yes that's right, they are putting on their neon face paints and glitter and coming along with me! 
I'm not a drug taking raver who gets completely wasted and misplaces the children oh apart from that one time... just kidding!!!

My girls are pretty brilliant, they love listen to music especially when it is live, they like to dance and they love to learn about different cultures, all things they will get from going to festivals!

So I thought I would write a little review of the festivals I enjoy taking my children to and the ones I would never again set foot in, and it might then give you the inspiration to take your children to weekends away where they will definitely find new memories to take home with them. 

Larmer Tree Festival, nr Salisbury on the Wiltshire/Dorset border.
www.larmertreefestival.co.uk

This is one of the most family friendly festivals you can go to! 
There is a whole area for children and all the bands are family friendly, there is so much to see and do. The grounds are kept spotless with people collecting the litter and emptying the many bins frequently, and the toilets are probably the cleanest you will get at a festival!!
There is a family camp site, a quiet camp site and general camping, with toilets and showers in each field and plenty of taps with running water.
Last year Katie from Cbeebies did a show for the children which was brilliant, there is a night time walk you can do through some wooded trees with lots of lights and ambient music.
If you want to start out at a festival this is the one to do although the children's tickets are pricey, at other festivals you just pay a booking fee where as at Larmer it is half an adult ticket.

Gorgeous sculptures in the Larmer Tree gardens.

One of the stages in the Lamer Gardens

Festibelly, New Forest music festival, Lymington
www.festibelly.com

This was a very small but cute festival. There was a special tent for children to spend time either alone or with their parents. 
There was a varied selection of bands which was good but they had not planned for the amount of people who went to the festival!! The toilets were grim to put it mildly, there were no toilets in the camping field let alone showers so you had to walk back to the festival if you needed the toilet and the water tap kept running out so there was no water to drink most of the time.
This was nice to take children to as it wasn't hectic although there wasn't that much to do.

My girls love to get involved!

Secret Garden Party, Abbots Ripley, Huntingdon
www.secretgardenparty.com

NOT FOR CHILDREN!!! I bought tickets for my children but at the last minute they were given the chance to go away for the week with my dad - thank goodness!!!!!!!!!
There was no break from the pill heads and dance music mixed with a large amount of miscreants! 
There were however lots of amazing sculptures and art works around the grounds and they did have a children corner in the grounds for children to do things but really this was not for children I wouldn't have felt relaxed like I do at others, I would want to keep hold of them the whole time!
The toilets.. there wasn't enough, and they were filth!

Fox sculputure

Paint throwing @ Secret Garden

Could you crouch above this to do your wee?

Square Fayre, Worth Matravers, Purbecks
www.squarreandcompasspub.co.uk

This is a very mini festival at a pub called The Square and Compass in the tiny village of Worth Matravers. With lots of music playing all Saturday into the night this is only good for children if they can entertain themselves, mine enjoy making loom bands whilst also making new friends, it is literally in the pub garden over looking fields and the sea. 
There isn't a camp site attached to the pub but a short walk through fields and you get to Western Dairy campsite which have toilets that smell of lemons and are so clean! 
They also have a small hut that sells BBQ food, breakfast baps in the morning and ice creams! A really chilled out weekend as long as the weather is good, best to go with a group of friends with children!

Right by the seaside, absolutely beautiful surroundings!

The Wilderness festival, Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire
www.wildernessfestival.com

This is great if you really want to immerse your children into true festival spirit. There is a huge range of music, sculptures, beautiful grounds and the toilets have got better this year, when they decide to work there are showers and water points.
There is a babysitting service that you need to prebook before you go as the places get filled up pretty quickly. I paid for two nights worth of babysitting but ended up only putting the girls in there for a couple of hours as I felt they were missing out.
There is a whole family section with fun things for kids to do all day and lots of things all around the festival to see and do to keep them entertained. Even at night there are parades and bonfires to see which my girls loved.
You can go swimming in the river there, there really is so much to do!
However the journey from the car park to the campsite is a long and arduous one and you need to either take your own trolley or hire one when you are there.

We have the Purbeck Folk festival, Bardic picnic and Festival number 6 to do. 
Larmer Tree is always the best every year!

Why you should always use a tracking device when you go camping...

So this years festival season is in mid-flow and having already been to 5 in the past two months, I think I'm doing pretty well.

As a family we have had many 'experiences' during our festival times, none stands out more than the time last year when, 'mummy lost the tent'!!!!

We, (me and my two daughters) had arrived at the Larmer Tree Festival, near to Salisbury, and we were very very excited! 
The sun was shining and so were the faces of everyone in the field, we could tell this was going to be a good weekend. 

For the small sum of £10 you could get a lift with all of your belongings in the back of a trailer attached to an electric bike, ridden by an extremely cheery man raising money for charity, what he didn't know was just how much stuff we had brought with us.

As there was no way I would be able to trek the tent, the girls and all the 'essentials' girls need at a festival, i.e. headdresses, feathers, outfits for all occasions and lots and lots of glitter, on my own this seemed the perfect idea and the best way to start the weekend!

We travelled the way to Quiet camping like princesses in a carriage and excitedly got out of the trailer, accosted two random strangers and convinced them to put our tent up, dumped all the bags into the tent and raced off to see the bands!
That night we left earlyish so we could have another late night the following night. I felt good, we had seen lots of amazing bands, made lots of new friends and I had successfully taken the girls to a festival alone! 
I was completely prepared with a kinetic torch so it would never run out just like Bear Grylls would have done, which meant we would be able to find our tent. Or would we? 
In the delusion that nothing could ever go wrong as we are at a festival and the sun is shining we had not, OK, OK, I had not looked, to see where the tent had been put up?! 

We were searching using the torch that I then realised shone dimmer than a glow worm under a duvet and no amount of winding the wheel made it any stronger , in other words you could barely see a foot in front of your feet!  Suddenly our calm up and down the paths in the field turned into frantic tripping over guide ropes and coming to the realisation that if we didn't find the tent pretty soon I would be giving up and we would have to sleep in the car! I did know where the car was parked right?
Finally 35 minutes later and we literally 'bumped' into two security men. 
'What do you do if you think you may have lost your tent?' I said in a jokey, carefree voice trying to disguise the panic and embarrassment I really felt.
'You just need to go to every tent until you find it, what does it look like?'
'What does it look like? What does it look like? What sort of a question is that?! Its a tent.....'
I then realised that actually I had no idea what it even looked like, I didn't know the colour or any outstanding features and this whole situation was getting worse and worse.
'It has a little picture of a fire on the side and its green,' said Daughter no.1
'Well I'm not entirely sure of that!' I replied laughing like it was absurd that a tent would have a picture of a fire on the side and isn't she precious thinking that it did....!

And so that was it, that was the time that me and the girls walked up and down nearly every tent in the whole of the Quiet camping field at Larmer Tree festival with two burly security men until we came to, yep you know it, a green tent with a small flame retardant picture of a fire!!!!