latitude Festival 2010 - day 3 - Saturday - Suffolk

18/7/2010

Art installation in the woods

Sheep in the sun

Sports day

Knitting tent

Some lovely friends we met in the knitting tent

children's area

I dont know what these are, but children made them in the children's area

fun area for children

One of the tasks was to think of something that is wrong with the world...

and then think of a way to fix it.

One of the suggestions

Crazy lady in the woods

River in the evening

Latitude Festival 2010 - day 1 - Thursday - Suffolk

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.

The Royal Norfolk Show - Norwich

1/7/2010

This year I managed to blag a free ticket to the Royal Norfolk Show (I say blagged, its not like I'm cool enough to have super blagging skillz but Lucy had a free one because her sister was showing goats) so I got  to go to the show for the first time and also managed to save my self £25! Go me!

The Royal Norfolk Show runs over two days and is probably Norfolk's biggest agricultural show - I would assume given how many animals were present anyway. Like most county shows that I've ever been too, there were lots of competitions for judging the best sheep, pigs, goats, chickens as well as show jumping and horse and carriage driving etc.

 There were also hundreds of stands selling everything from local produce, clothing and lemonade to alternative hearses and tractors. There were also stands that from the local schools that put on a number of displays about worthy subjects like water production, recycling and bees. Then there were the more exciting ones that had activities for 'children' such as finger and potato painting... and yes I did some potato printing - obviously.

Me, Lucy and Josh arrived at the show ground at the ungodly hour of 9am, and set off in search of Lucy's youngest sister Chloe who was involved in showing goats. Her class was at 11.30 (although we didn't know that then) but we needed to find where the goat tent actually was, and more importantly find some breakfast.

Two of the goats Chloe shows

Some of the prizes they won on the 1st day

We found some awesome nourishment in the form of ostrich and kangeroo burgers, I had kangeroo and Josh had the Ostrich. His was better, kangeroo was rather like beef - so a bit dull. We then had an ice cream each and went to watch the goats.

Josh and I with our breakfast

Menu

Chloe showing her goat

Sadly Chloe didn't win, although she had had some really good results the day before, we then all trooped over to the schools tent where Chloe had to pick up 2nd prize in the year 10 &11 art competition. When we saw the picture that had won, we all thought she had been robbed and should have come first, but then of course we were all biased. Chloe and I then went for a wander around the tent collecting stickers and making potato prints. We are clearly the coolest people ever.

Chloe and her picture

The picture that won

Amazing poem

My favourite picture

In the afternoon, Josh and Lucy had to go back to work to grow some bacteria or something else suitably complicated, and Lucy's mum offered me a lift home so I decided to stay for the afternoon. When they left, I went and brought a ticket to watch the show jumping in the main arena, for £7 I got to watch precisely 5 rounds before the competition ended. What a good buy that was. I then perused the show ground in search of things to do. I looked around all of the stalls and went to the Norfolk Bee keepers tent to learn some more facts about bees, and also watched the oddity that was the sheep show.

The amazing sheep show

Norfolk bee keeps stand

Anglia funeral service

Tractor stand

Prize winning pig

Hot cows

After I had filled my head with useful sheep related knowledge I headed back to the main goat tent. Chloe, Lucy's mum and I were roped into taking the goats into one of the arena's so that children could come up and stroke them and lead them around the paddock. The goats were pretty naughty, either jamming their feet into the ground and refusing too move or else bombing around the paddock dragging some poor child behind them. Goats are incredible.

Odds Farm, Wooburn Green, High Wycombe

4/6/2010

So me and Joe have been wanting to go to Odds farm for roughly three years, ever since he started uni and we realised High Wycombe didn't have much else to offer after you've seen the chair museum. Why did we want to go so much? Sheep racing. That's why. Teddy bear "jockeys" are tied on to various sheep and then the sheep are chased around a race course, while being forced to hurl themselves over jumps for the sick amusement of the paying visitors. The pictures on the website looked amazing. We were ridiculous excited.

House next to Odds Farm, best decorated house ever

This house was the first thing we saw when we arrived, I'm torn between loving and hating the paint job. Big tick for originality, but big cross for idiocy so it balances itself out to indifference I think. Thats not true, I do quite admire it.

Incredibly cute foal

Anyway after paying £9(!) to get in, we purchased animal feed and started wondering around the paddock. There were lots of baby animals too see, but most of the paddocks had double fencing around them, which was annoying because it means you couldn't get close enough to stroke most of the animals. I realise this is for safety reasons, so the animals are less likely to escape but also so that people don't get injured by the animals. But since its quite expensive to get in, its not really value for money. I'm probably just moaning, if id been the recommend age group (5-10) which the farm tries to attract, I wouldn't have been so bitter because they have a several really good play grounds and mini motorized tractors to go on. 

I was too big to go on these. I was jealous. I still am.

Lazy Pigs!

chicken with hat

Easiest maze in the world

After we had wondered around for a while, we stumbled upon the worlds easiest maze (yes I know its designed for children). We had to find the sheep inside, they weren't real sheep of course, just cardboard ones named things like 'Flossy' and 'Snowy'.

Mini Golf

Next we played mini gold, I don't know who won, we were all pretty bad, but i did finish first - so I count that as a victory for me.

Escapee goat

Baby Goats

Donkeys

Baby rabbits

sheep

Goats doing a crazy head dance to get food

Hiding piglet

left behind

In the end we didn't see the sheep racing, we had to leave at 2pm and it wasn't on till 3.30. We were pretty gutted, I hope we go back sometime. It was a fun day out, it's probably more fun for children than grown ups, but that's not surprising really.