16/7/2010
This year was the 5th annual Latitude Festival, held at the gorgeous Henham Park in Suffolk. Latitude is the kind of festival that is seen as middle class (I'm not joking when I say that people were fighting over a smuggled in copy of the Guardian - Latitude was a The Times only zone), due to its core demographic being parents and kids, it was probably once described as a boutique festival - but I think its grown to big too warrant that tag now. Latitudes U.S.P. is that its more than just a music festival - it offers theatre, comedy, literature, ballet and a variety of non music related treats, so it tries to cater for everyone.
After much deliberating on whether my boyfriend and I would go on a proper holiday or not, we decided to revisit Latitude since we had gone in 2008 and loved it. When I first went to Latitude, it was the second festival I had ever experience, and boy, did it beat the crap out of Reading. It hosted a better choice of alcohol, food, line up and most importantly atmosphere. There were no drunken arseholes trying to set fire to peoples tents, no being crushed and shoved about watching bands or people just being general twats. So I was excited about going back in 2010.
We arrived at Latitude soon after the gates had opened at 2pm, after a some what eventful journey involving me, my car, and the back of somebody else's car. We waited in line for what seemed like forever, but what was probably only about 1hr at most, we collected our wrist bands and then went off to pitch the tent.
The Green Campsite
We tried to find a land mark to camp near, (always a good idea so that you can find your way back from the toilets at 3am) Joe built the tent while I stood around dolling out constructive criticism, and we then went exploring.
View from our tent
On our travels we passed the multi-coloured sheep which are a Latitude tradition, they are their every year. This time they were all different colours, but when I went last time they were only pink. I think animals should always be at festivals. In order to get to the festival ground, you have to walk over the specially constructed bridge over the river, which you can see in the picture below. Henham park really is a lovely place for a festival.
The famous multi-coloured Latitude sheep, the bridge and the tent of The Word stage
Dyed sheep - they didn't even leak in the rain
The river that you have to cross to enter the main site
In the evening, as there were no bands on as they didn't start till the friday (except TOM JONES in the woods, which was packed so we gave it a miss) so we watched the light display that was projected onto the river. I'm always surprised how cold it gets at festivals and forget to bring a jumper with me brrrrrrrrrrr.
Evening light display on the river
Festival site at night
The literature tent
In the end we crashed the literary tent for want of something to do. Robin Ince's book club was on which was amazing. Robin reads from a book series about killer giant crabs and has an actor acting the parts next too him , sometimes with musical instruments. We watched him a lot over the weekend.
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