Festival season; it's not all about Glastonbury

 Every year when Glastonbury weekend comes around my social media feeds are full of people talking about it - some watching it on TV, some reminiscing about the time they went, some lucky folks actually there. And, always one to not miss out on something, I think maybe I should try and go one year - after all I may be old but not as old as some of the performers.

Then I look at the crowds, think about standing for hours, walking between tent and stages, queuing for toilets, and acknowledge that it's not really for me (unless, you know, I could go along as a VIP or maybe a headliner's guest)

I've come to festivalling late in life, so maybe it's age, maybe it's just that I like things a little quieter but I prefer something smaller, more intimate, less hectic, more relaxing, with a mix of music, activities, and ideas.

One of my favourites is Timber Festival, almost on my doorstep in the National Forest, to which I've been several times as one of their 'pioneer' bloggers. Held this year on the 7-9th July, talks will be headlined by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path and Landlines, music by The Go! Team, Keston Cobblers Club, and Sister Wives. At the heart of the programming lies the forging and maintaining of our relationship with nature in general, and trees in particular.  Workshops range from guerrilla gardening to writing, foraging walks to yoga, printing with leaves to learning how to decoratively fix holes in clothes. I find there's always something new to discover.

A logical sort of progression from Timber is The Green Gathering, at Piercefield Park, near Chepstow, 3-6th August. It maybe has a 'hippie' sort of vibe but I think there's a lot that all of us could learn from it. As the 'original off-grid festival', the whole event is powered by renewable energy, and there are folks around to show you how it's done, and how you could do it too. At the speakers Forum you'll find experts discussing green issues such as climate change, building a greener Britain and Wales' Net Zero initiative. In the craft area you can learn the skills necessary for a more sustainable life - mending tools, making things from wood or willow, even having a go at making a trinket at the Nowhere Forge  - or in the Campaigns Field you can learn about social and environmental issues. It's not a totally serious weekend though. There's an eclectic array of musical artists from folk to psychedelic sounds via politically-conscious singer songwriters.  Anyone who follows me on either Twitter or Instagram will know I grow my own veg and fruit, turn it into meals, jam and pickles, knit, sew, and am generally looking out for ways to live a greener life, so in many ways this is an obvious choice for me.

If that's a bit too 'out there' for you, I'd suggest a gentle relaxing weekend in Capability Brown parkland at ALSO festival on Park Farm Estate, Compton Verney, in Warwickshire. The setting is wonderful, with the original landscaping making level areas by the lake just right for camping pitches, food marquees, and stages. 

This year -14th-16th July - is ALSO's tenth anniversary and there'll be as wide a range of speakers as ever, including Jess Philips MP, Sara Pascoe, Robin Ince, and Jeffrey Boakye, music to dance the night away to, an organised run or dance workshops for the energetic, paddle-boarding and swimming at the lake, or just chill out in the beautiful parkscape. A new addition is the food festival within the festival, with a wider range of bookable lunches, masterclasses and tastings. 

This is an event that I was invited along to last year but just because I went for free doesn't mean it wasn't any less special.

photo credit: The Big Feastival

For food lovers there's a treat at The Big Feastival 25-27th August in the Cotswolds. I stumbled across this festival last year, when Kathy Slack (whose cookery demonstration I'd seen at ALSO), announced she was appearing. The emphasis, perhaps obviously, is on food with over 20 chefs cooking and inspiring festival-goers,and Feast on the Farm with Pasture offers a three course sit down lunch or dinner for anyone who thinks fine-dining belongs only in a restaurant. The offerings from street food traders looks wonderful too.

photo credit: The Big Feastival

This is also, of my chosen list, the festival with biggest music headliners - Sigrid, Tom Brennan, Blossoms, and Rick Astley,  I think it was rightly described as 'Glastonbury but with lots more delicious food'.*  There's also a vintage funfair, a fire pit with cookery demos (you'll never look at your backgarden bbq the same way again), a craft corner, children's entertainment in the Big Top, a chance for both adults and children to get hands on with M&S cookdery classes, and a hot dog eating competition (most? quickest? with least tomato ketchup on your top? I know which one I'd win)

photo credit: Department Two

 Now if you still thought these festivals sounded too large and busy, then there's one, or a series, designed specially for you. For several years The Good Life Experience festival was held in early September at Hawarden Castle in North Wales, but now the organisers have decided to change to a series of Summer Camps held on four weekends throughout July. 

photo credit:
Department Two

In form they're much like the festival was - celebrating the good things in life with food, music, workshops, talks, lake swimming, and paddle-boarding - but with far less participants so you can actually get to know your fellow festivallers/campers. There'll be evening feasts prepared by chefs like Romy Gill or Valentine Warner, a secluded castle garden to explore, new activities to try, new skills to learn. As co-founder Charlie Gladstone puts it "Summer Camp will be a retreat, a place to recharge and to explore new places and ideas". 

It sounds idyllic to me.

There's one event left which I'd recommend for anyone interested in a different slant on the news -  Byline Festival, which has been running in Sussex for several years but is now moving to the Dartington Trust near Totnes in Devon. It's mission, in the words of sister orgainsation the Byline Times,  is to shed light on 'what the papers don't say' and is packed with speakers such as Jonathan Pie, Bonnie Greer OBE, Joanna Scanlan, George Monbiot, and Carole Cadwalladr, with the serious talks interspersed with good food and dancing. There's one regrettable snag though - it's so popular that it's sold out! There is a 'wait list' though in case of any ticket returns.

Another snag prevents me personally from packing up my tent and spending all summer under the festival skies - after a series of unfortunate mishaps with twisted ankles and pulled leg muscles walking on grass is too hazardous for me, and the thought of putting up the tent makes me shudder. Hopefully I'll be back to full fitness for next summer. Fingers crossed.

*by Zahra Surya Darma Conde Nast Traveler

Timber - practicalities

Camping, eating, and, of course, festival toilets

The organisers of any festival are hoping that you'll head home having had a wonderful time. They can set up the inspiring talks, line up the music  but, no matter how good these are, the practical, down to earth things contribute just as much to having a good weekend. Last year I could only attend for a few hours each day, so I talked about the practical aspects from a middle-aged day visitor's perspective. This year I was invited back by Wild Rumpus, and could go along for the full sleepover experience. So here are my thoughts on a weekend of camping, eating and festival toilets.




We aren't seasoned campers and it's a while since we've been out and about with the tent - in fact Curious Arts Festival in 2017 was the last time - but we were fairly certain we'd remember how to do it. We had a little run through at home first though to make sure (you don't want to look totally confused in the middle of a campsite where everyone else looks like an expert)




The airbed had seen better days, so we bought a new one - two actually, as putting a double-sized bed in the middle of the sleeping section left nowhere to stand up. As an unexpected bonus, the new beds came in really useful boxes that saved us having to buy bedside tables for phones, glasses, festival programmes etc. We still had a couple of difficulties - my bed was too hard the first night - deflating it made it much more comfortable - and the spot we'd chosen wasn't quite as level as we thought, so there was a tendency to roll off the bed. No doubt more experienced campers have a better way of judging a campsite.

One problem we've had before was spotting our tent from all the others of the same type, so I'd turned some scraps of material into bunting - no more mistaking my tent in the middle of the night, and it hopefully makes the guy ropes a little more visible to other folks.

Another 'new investment' was (fixing) a sack truck. Hard work had ruined its wheels but some new ones had it ready to roll (sorry) again. It proved very useful as the campsite was a walk from the car park - a bit troublesome if you had to carry all your gear. Lots of people had the sort of truck you can buy from outdoors shops, or those children's wagons like tiny wild west caravans, but looks aren't everything and ours did the job. If you didn't have some sort of cart, volunteers were on hand to help, and you could even get your gear transported by horse and cart.



Despite the precariously balanced appearance of the sack truck our camping equipment is quite minimal - somewhere to sleep, somewhere to sit, no where to cook, but as we use the tent solely at festivals this isn't a problem (until someone close by starts frying bacon for breakfast).
The site was away from the main festival area, so fairly quiet at night though the music could be heard in the distance. There was generous provision of toilets and showers (more below), stand-pipes for fresh drinking water, sinks to wash pots, and recycling bins for rubbish.

Tent up, it was time to head to the festival itself ...




Almost the first thing to catch my eye on entering the festival site was a stall selling crepes, savoury and sweet, perfect for breakfast, but the main foodie area was closer to the stages and all the action. A welcome addition this year was a huge open marquee with picnic tables - when the sun shone it offered shade, when Saturday turned wet it sheltered me and my cheese and bean toastie.





Short of eating constantly, I couldn't sample all the food on offer but I tried - with toasties, salt and thyme fries, hotdogs (available in more varieties than I ever imagined - I tried original 'naked' and a dressed up version with barbecue sauce and bacon sprinkles), loaded chips with chilli beans, smoked haddock croquettes with salad and pickles, danish pastries with jam or custard, sheep's milk ice cream, and bacon butties (so our camping neighbour was forgiven their morning fry-up). There were so many other options - from Thai food to Greek to baked potatoes - but just not enough time.

Lastly, that item that always seems of foremost importance at festivals - toilets. Whenever I mention going to a festival no one asks where? when? who's appearing? which bands are playing? No, the first question is almost always 'what about the toilets?' The answer? - they were fab. Maybe not 5star hotel fab, but, given the constraints of a temporary site out in the countryside, you couldn't have found better. At the main entrance and on the campsite there were real flushing toilets with handbasins (though sometimes the taps' water pressure gave up). In case they weren't enough, this row of standard portaloos were waiting though I never saw them in use.

In the main festival area the toilets were more adventurous - compost loos. Designer eco-houses on TV have them, so why not a festival site? There's no heavy disinfectant masking smells, just a long drop ('Don't look down', I heard one father say to a small child) to a pit of sawdust, and the 'by product' is taken away to become fertiliser. Occasionally, on the third day, I caught a slight odour when walking past them but nothing noxious. Maybe they could have been positioned a little more out-of-sight, but not so far that they couldn't be found. I found the steps up and down a little daunting, as in any situation where you can slide and look foolish I generally do, but I survived. Again, there were traditional portaloos if you didn't want to use them.
I don't quite understand non-festival goers hang ups about toilets. I'm been to other different outdoors events - garden shows, summer fayres, horse shows - and encountered worse. Festivals just seem to have acquired a bad press, which is a shame.


After a long day out in the sun you need to cool down, in the morning you need something to wake you up, and the campsite had hot showers ready for either. Again, don't expect 5 star luxury and you won't be disappointed. The water was set to a good hot, but not scalding, temperature, and was unlimited. A shower curtain divided each cubicle into wet and dry areas, so no wet clothes and towels to contend with. And there were sinks with hot and cold water, too. What more do you actually need? Obviously at popular times there were queues, but there were enough showers to give them moving.

Despite being a sponsored post with gifted tickets, this (and for that matter, the other posts relating to Timber) isn't a press hand-out but a reflection of my experiences. I can't guarantee next year's facilities but this year's were definitely above average.
The festival as a whole has something to appeal to all ages; there were lots of young families there, plenty of older folk like myself, though teens maybe seemed lacking in numbers. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone with an interest in ecology and environmental concerns, or just someone who wants to get outdoors a bit more, and experience a wilder side of life.

Food and Drink Festival, and a walk in the park

 My diary had seemingly a hundred and one things penciled in for this past weekend. Well, a dozen maybe. I'd thought I might dash here and there and try to catch an hour or so of several, but settled in the end for picking just two nearby events.

First up, on Saturday, was The Big Derbyshire Food and Drink Festival held at Shipley Country Park.

I'm not really a foodie as such, but of late, inspired by my younger daughter's more adventurous attitude to food, I'm experimenting more  - not weird ingredients for the sake of them, but something additional that makes an everyday food special. We'd already had lunch, perhaps a mistake as there were lots of options for eating there - from burgers and specialty sausages to Columbian, Jamaican and Greek food.

As it was we contented ourselves with sampling some of the other products to take home. I was pleasantly surprised at the wide selection - brownies, gin, curry mixes, fruit liqueurs, cheeses, pork pies, and marmalade, plus some delicious carrot and courgette cake at a Love Food, Hate Waste initiative run by Derbyshire County Council ... I could probably have just spent the afternoon 'grazing' :)








And, of course, we didn't come home empty-handed but with a selection of cheeses from The Black Farmer, the Kitcham Brothers, and Glastonbury Cheese, blueberry and liquorice jam from Peckish Kitchen, an unusual Swahili curry mix from Kiran's, and lavender and lemongrass gin from Springmount Gin.







A bit of exercise seemed in order, and we were in a country park so wandered away from the music and bustle of the Food Fair. Not far, but a lovely peaceful contrast, and, for once, the sun shone.

I could get used to this as a way to spend a weekend afternoon (though I'll have to stop buying cheese!)

A "Half-full" Week - despite parents' health problems

Since the beginning of the year we seem to have been in a loop of disruptions, and just when I thought things were settling down, after earlier-than-expected grandson, colds, my daughter's move, and then the snow, something else came along to throw everything pear-shaped. This time it was health problems for my parents. Something comparatively minor really - apart from the fact that if you're in your late 90s NOTHING is ever minor, so when a younger person would be nipping to see a GP, older folk end up in hospital, and when one goes in hospital, the other goes into respite care. So we've had a week or more spending all day out, dashing, or sitting stuck in traffic queues, between hospital and care home, getting home with barely enough time to walk the poor dog (who's definitely feeling neglected), grab a takeaway/frozen dinner, and collapse on the sofa, numbly watching old Star Trek Enterprise and Big Bang Theory, before falling asleep.
Nothing prepares you for having to turn into carer for your parents, and it's been a week that's left me physically and emotionally drained. Sadly, such weeks are bound to become more frequent.
It's too easy, though, to fall into the glass-half-empty mindset, so instead I've decided to list all the good things that also happened this week.


Firstly, a competition prize arrived. A Taste of Arran gift box won through CalMac ferries in the run up to Christmas. It's taken a while to arrive as e-mails got mixed up, but it's here! And filled with cheese, chutney, oatcakes, and (my Scottish favourites) haggis, and tablet (sort of like fudge but better).

Making time on Mother's Day to take Dylan the dog out for a special walk at Shipley Country Park, with new places for him to sniff, oh and daffodils and snowdrops for me to admire.

Later that day, tea with our eldest daughter to celebrate her first Mother's Day, and look, a wonderful 'first' for me too, a card from my baby grandson.




Retail therapy and discovering a fab new (to me) clothing brand, Lily and Me. FB has been showing me their adverts for a while, and this week I thought, Why not? Let's try them - and these first two tops are great.





Food - yes, we've eaten a LOT of frozen dinners and takeaways, but one day we treated ourselves to lunch at IKEA - hardly gourmet dining but it was different (Moroccan chicken), self-service so quickly picked up, and, most importantly, on the route from care home to hospital.


Our new armchair, on order for six or seven weeks, arrived.








More food! Lemon muffins from Morrisons. I don't often shop there but we were restocking my parents' food cupboards with cake, amongst other things, and I thought it best to test these myself.




The garden daffodils have survived the beating they took from the snow, and are now in flower.









And don't forget social media. I know lots of people knock it, but at times like these it reminds me that there IS more to life than sitting in traffic queues and hospital wards

A Typical Sunday?

 What do you consider to be a typical Sunday? Is there such a thing? A slow start to the day, followed by a slower afternoon watching old films on TV, maybe a big Sunday roast dinner squeezed in somewhere?


Well, this was mine -

a spur of the moment decision to check out the progress of Spring and Shipley Country Park's snowdrops (more pics here)










Then out to a local pub where my daughter was playing at a charity music gig









and rounding the day off with one (possibly two) of my new Sixty Things - tapas (including calamari). Admittedly neither of these will be new to many folk but they are to me, which is what counts for these challenges/celebrations.

Younger daughter has been wanting to take me to Lorentes Tapas Bar in Derby for a while, but I asked her to wait till this new year and make it part of my Sixty Things. I loved the whole tapas idea - a bit like trying everything from the starters section of a menu, and everything was so beautifully presented. I'll definitely be back - but my instinct was right - I didn't like the squid!

Midsummer

The longest day started wet and unpleasant, short bursts of sun disrupted by heavy rain, but by midafternoon the sky had cleared leaving high clouds and a change to catch the solstice full 'strawberry' moon.


















Appropriately, the first strawberries have ripened this week, and from the allotment we have lettuce and peas. Apples are starting to swell on the trees and grapes in the greenhouse.

The flower beds have moved on from their Ikea blue and yellow (forget-me-nots and welsh poppies) of a fortnight ago to the pink and purples of foxgloves, flowering sage, lavender, hardy geraniums and even some pink-tinged love-in-a-mist, against the backdrop of the creamy-white climbing roses.

...and now while the weather stays dry and bright, for a couple of days at least, it's time to get out, pick elderflowers and make wine