Good morning beautiful souls,
I can’t believe that it has already been about 3 weeks since I was reunited with my best friend (who had just returned from her 5 month trip of a lifetime traveling around the world with her husband) and we set off on our annual holiday together to the Lindisfarne Festival. Because she lives in London I don’t get to see her as often as I’d like and so we decided 3 years ago, when we went to our first Lindisfarne Festival, that we would make this our annual holiday together.
We set off in the afternoon just managing to beat rush hour traffic and arrived in time to watch the sun slowly set as we set up camp. The sunsets are always beautiful there and sadly the photos just never do them justice, but they’re such a sight to behold!
As we’re old farts when it comes to festival bedtime we decided to camp in the quiet area of the campsite this year which, bar for some rude people who didn’t quite seem to understand the concept of quiet, made our stay much more enjoyable as we got a decent night’s sleep (a big thanks goes to my earplugs of course too)!!
Once our comfortable 5 man tent was set up and decked out in fairy lights we opened a jar of olives, popped open a bottle of bubbly and relaxed for a while before going to check out the festival arena.
We even surprised ourselves and ended up staying out grooving away until about 1am (I know you’ll laugh – that’s not late – but usually we’d be tucked up in our sleeping bags by that time haha).
Friday morning was lovely and sunny and we started our day with a yummy healthy breakfast of fruit & musli and a cuppa tea. Note: we both had our pretty reusable bamboo cutlery with us and eco mugs!! Although I managed quite well on some eco friendly accounts, there was sadly still plenty that I didn’t manage to do quite as eco friendly as I might have, so I will endeavour to do a better job next year!!!
After breakfast we got ready for the day, donned on our festival outfits & makeup and headed for the arena. I wore this really cute floaty skirt from Next that my mum had bought me as a treat and paired it with a crop top from New Look and these bright earrings from Accessorize.
After we’d listened to some spoken word, comedy and various musicians we headed back to our tent for lunch, a game of Yazi and some more drinks. I’d found these Pimm’s imitations in Lidl along with some G&T’s and they were perfect for the festival. The past few years we’d brought beer and wine, but Emily and I can only drink one or two cans of beer before we’re beered out haha, so these were a very welcome tasty change!
Being next to the sea, it is always so much windier and in the evenings it really cools down quite quickly, so before we went out again in the evening we got changed into something slightly warmer. We hadn’t really heard of anyone that was playing at this years Festival, but it was kind of nice just stumbling upon new people and groups, from jazzy solo vocals and rock bands to reggae, there was a great mix!
On Saturday morning we took our (now also usual) trip onto Holy Island for a little walk and break from the festival site and of course so I could say hi to my old stomping ground – Pilgrims Coffee House – and enjoy a top notch cuppa home roasted coffee!
By the time we’d returned and had lunch we had sadly ended up missing acro/partner yoga as well as laughter yoga which we’d planned on doing. I’d also really wanted a massage, but all the booking slots were full by the time we returned. However we hadn’t wanted to tie ourselves down either by booking things and so we joined in with the hoola hoop workshop instead which was a great laugh but really hard work actually! I sucked at hoola hooping around my stomach, Emily faired way better than me, but I did succeeded in hoola hooping with my hands and even switching hands mid movement!
As you can see, the struggle is real – my face says it all – haha!
After a good hoola hoop workout we watched some fire performers and warmed up by the fire pit before the smoke blowing into our eyes moved us along. We ambled around until the Showhawk Duo were on (2 acoustic guitars covering dance tracks and the like). They were absolutely phenomenal and really had the crowd going!!!! Definitely one of the best acts we saw!
And well that was sadly already the last evening. The festival was well organised, there were lots of various acts, stalls and food vendors and the toilets were cleaned every day so they were never in too bad a condition.
My only wish for the future is that there are more Vegan food options available, that there is an official rule about no more noise after 12 in the quite camping, that more bins are provided and that people would actually tidy away their rubbish. The rubbish difference between the Vegan Camp Out and this was huge!
But we had an absolute blast of a time and can’t wait for next year already! It feels so nice to have an intimate local festival to return to every year!!
I hope you enjoyed seeing what I got up to and I’m really sorry I haven’t posted much recently! I will endeavour to work on this!!!
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