Making the most of our last festival of the year!

We thought we'd finished our festival run this year & then we were asked at the last minute to take over the pitch of our friends Amy & James at Mamacha at Beautiful Days. We ummed & we aaahed & then we wondered if we could afford it & then we worried about how to get everything down to Devon & then we thought...who are we kidding??? This is the chance to do another festival, ofcourse we're going to go!

So we hired a trailer, packed it as full as we could& set off to drive to Devon. Did you know that as soon as you hit Hampshire the road gets really hilly, but we soon got over the indignity of being over taken while chugging up the hills at 25mph by caravans, horse boxes & lorries & really enjoyed our trip. Even though we only saw 2 Eddie Stobart lorries on the way down! Have we mentioned before that we count Eddie Stobart lorries when we're travelling...no? well we do, you should try it, gets addictive :)                                                                                                                                 

Oh & we saw Stonehenge! There's a really cool view from the road!

We over came some other challenges on the way down too like pulling into the car park of a service station only to realise that there was no where to turn round with a trailer & then having to drive through the MacDonald's drive thru in order to get out! And then we got there & set up & had a totally groovy weekend. Can you see how teeny our stall looks? It looked bigger from the inside though & then we did some really cool adjustments for the rain with tied up gazebo walls & gaffer tape!!!  

Where we were was outside the main arena in camping but we had lovely (although slightly nuts) neighbours in the RSPB boys & the Geo fossils who looked after us beautifully all weekend & even let us borrow their daughter to keep us company when we got a bit bored!(love the fact that Luke is trying to keep his coffee in his glass as he jumps)

We had a great weekend!

 Beautiful days is the Levellers' festival & they open & close proceedings. There is no sponsership, branding or advertising & yet they sell out every year! There is a glorious mix of people & this year there was some awesome music! (We're sure they always have awesome music but this was our first time)

Our highlights include: seeing Adrian Edmondesn & the Bad Shepherds who were really really good inspide of Aid's self depricating commentary, Tim Minchin who is an absolute comic genius, the light bulb moment when we realised that the festival probably takes it's name from that really famous Levellers' song: What a Beautiful Day! & watching the firework display that closed the fesitval illuminating the aforementioned song (fireworks will always be cool!) We're gutted that we only heard the end of Gogol Bordello - reported to be the set of the festival the two songs that we heard were fabulous! We're definitely getting their album!

There were gorgeous sunsets & happily it didn't rain as much as it could have...

The best thing about festivals is the people you meet & the random strangers who will help you when you need it as we discovered when the starter motor on the Lovely van broke just as we'd loaded everything...if not for the very kind man who bump started us (backwards down the hill, very cool!) we wouldn't have been going anywhere on Monday!                                                                                                                       

                                                               

Just incase you were wondering we made it all the way to Oxford before we had to stop & switch the engine off...then we parked (ie broke down) at a petrol station in Headington while we waited for Nigel the RAC man to come & get us going again. We made it home by 8.30, 5 & a half hours after we set off thanks to the kindness of strangers & the RAC!