Latitude Festival 2010 - day 4 - Sunday - Suffolk

19/7/2010

Wooo last day! I was more than ready to go home by this point, no washing for 4 days and I was seriously in need of some after sun and flushing toilets! Talking of toilets the ones below were the ones in our campsite, they weren't as terrible as they could have been, but they were not good on Sunday.

The lovely toilets

We met up with Ruth early, and went to watch Tom Jones who was playing a second set on the main stage at 12pm. Joe really wanted to see him play and I tagged along , but left half way through to get lunch. The show ground was practically empty and there were no queues as everyone was watching Tom Jones, he must have drawn the largest crowd of the weekend.

Below is Ruth eating her breakfast of cold beans.

Ruth eating breakfast

Crowd for Tom Jones

After Tom Jones, we had a couple of hours free and so went back to paint out lockness monster and claim our medals at The house of Fairy Tales. I think you will agree they were expertly painted.

Ruth and I painting our Loch ness Monsters

My monster

In order to obtain out medals we had to dress up and have out photos taken, below is Ruth, I laughed till I cried when I saw her dressed like this. I even smeared my face paint moustache.

To get a medal we had to dress up, this was Ruths costume

One the pictures from the photo booth. I have the original in my wallet.

After the excitement of being medal winners, Joe and I went and listened to children's story hour. Which was awesome, and I think Joe had a nap.

Childrens story time

Despite having a great weekend, I didn't think Latitude was as good as previous years. The core demographic had changed, when I went in 2008, I got the feeling that the group of 18/19/20 year olds I went with were in the minority, and that the place was over run by parents with lots of children under the age of 10. But this time, I think Latitude suffered a teen invasion, and i didn't see as many small children with their parents - there were still plenty but there were definitely more teenagers. I didn't really have a problem with them, I mean a lot of them were there just posing in sparkly new wellies that had never encountered mud before, but they didn't really get in my way.

But there was something that just wasn't right at this years event. Theres been a lot of discussion on the Latitude forums and I get the feeling that a lot of people blame the different atmosphere on the teenagers and the fact that there were more main stream headlines, and I think the majority of people want to become a smaller more exclusive and alternative festival once again. Then there were the two rapes that rocked the family friendly festival that happened on the thursday and friday nights, signs went up all over the place and apparently there was increased security. Although saying that I didn't see a single police officer all weekend.

I think I'm going to take this chance to say that I am officially retiring from festivals. I never really went to them for the music anyway, its not something I'm very interested in, but every time I go to a festival I'm always bored to tears by the live music that I don't enjoy. I prefer watching comedy etc. But combined with this fact and that I'm not very good at camping I don't think I'll be going to another one, I don't enjoy being there to justify spending almost £200 on a weekend ticket, maybe I'll just become a day tripper instead - but only if there is a band I really want to see.

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 2 - Friday - Suffolk

17/7/2010

It would be a lie to say that Friday wasn't all about food. As always, when you visit somewhere that has a large variety of different kinds of foods, you spend hours choosing what you want and try and go for the strangest thing on offer. At least thats what Joe does. I stick to reliable food stuffs that hopefully won't leave me glued to the primitive festival toilets for hours on end. For lunch Joe had haggis, neeps and tatties, mainly because he thought that they were more likely to take the crazy scottish money than any other vendor. I tried some haggis, I don't think we shall be the best of friends.

The only mussels Joe has!

Amazing hat that we saw in the comedy tent

After lunch there weren't any bands we wanted to see so we mooched over to the comedy tent, I can't remember who we saw, but they were probably quite funny - we didn't walk out anyway. While we were there, we saw the amazing hat pictured above. After while we got bored and went for a wander around the local produce stalls, most of them sold the typical crap you get see at festivals: hats, fairy wings and other things that would wouldn't buy if you were sober. However, there was one good stall that sold alpacha jumpers and ponchos! Joe really wanted one, but couldn't really justify spending £50 on a novelty item. *Sad face*.

Joe wanted this poncho

Main stage - don't know who was playing

The Word Arena, I think The National are playing

Joe and I then met up with some friends we knew and went to watch The National. I'd never heard of them, they were ok I think. After that we spent the rest of the night in the literary tent listening to tales of killer crabs.

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.