FRANCE - HOLIDAY - BONJOUR!!

1/9/2010

Flag on the ferry

Ellen, Lucy and I went on holiday to France this summer, the trip itself was in good but also pretty bad. It was a make or break holiday. Anyway, we left at 6.30am and set off for Dover, the drive was easy except for when we got to the Dartford bridge and we were queuing for absolutely ages! Going over the bridge was fun though, but I always get worried on long bridges/ in long tunnels that they will break and ill either drown or plummet into the water and then drown, but luckily it didn't happen that day. We got to Dover and hour and a half early so paid £10 to switch our tickets and caught an earlier ferry.

Goodbye England! - The white cliffs of Dover

Lucy and I were both really nervous about going on the ferry, the last time I went on a ferry was when I was 12, and I spent the whole 2 hour journey feeling like my stomach was trying to make a dash for the emergency exit - that exit being my mouth! Lucy has also had a similarly retch inducing experience. But all our worrying was for nothing, the crossing was smooth and was really sunny outside so we stood on the deck for a bit and got blown about by the wind.

Best illustrative picture of the wind

Calm seas

After we trundled of the ferry and onto dry land, I had more to worry about.. driving on the correct side of the road! This was really scary and Ellen and Lucy were really nice about my driving, not even yelling at me when we had a couple of near misses with other cars. Driving on - what to me is - the wrong side of the road, turned out to be pretty simple, just follow all the other drivers and everything seems to work out ok, the only exception to this rule being roundabouts.. then its a case of looking for a gap and praying you can execrate fast enough to join the mad scramble.

L'Hermitage, Vernon

After a peaceful 4 hour drive we arrived at Vernon, where we were staying for 2 nights on before we continued on to La Mothe Achard which was another 4 hours drive west. We stayed at a beautiful B&B called L'Hermitage, where we stayed in a suite and all felt very important. The room was huge and next morning we were told breakfast was served in our rooms, so we were all eagerly awaiting 9am and the breakfast bell.

The inside and outside of The Birds Suite

On The Roof ... 2!

There are many, many things about our new house that I hate. For example, the bathroom resembles some kind of underwater dungeon, the walls and floor are permanently wet, and because of this we now have mould growing anywhere it can get a foot hold. The ceiling, skirting boards, walls even the toilet roll holder has not been spared in the great mould invasion of autumn 2010. This problem has a solution: Ventilation and heat. Since I showered yesterday I made the game changing tactic of leaving the window open which dried the room out nicely - now we are leaving the window open all the time. So now although it feels like you've undertaken a trek to the antarctic when you need a wee at 3am, and its always a bit of a surprise when you can prize yourself off of the frozen toilet seat, but at least the floor isn't like a light bog and the toilet roll is dry rather than damp. Now hopefully when we scrape the mould from the walls it won't grow back.

Anyway, enough moaning, I won't complain about the rest of the house - although the living room carpet has to be seen to be believed - I'll now talk about my favourite part of the house, which is the roof. As I've mentioned before in a previous blog post we can get onto roof at the back of the house by climbing out of Sock's bedroom window, so on monday night the boys and I decided to venture on to roof and have an impromptu house warming party.

View from the roof

We took alcohol up with us - yes, I know this could have all ended in tears, but it didn't - and some snacks and had a couple of hours just sitting on the roof in the dark, till it got too cold and I went back inside. I also needed a wee, but unlike the boys I was too polite to piss off the roof and into the back 'garden' so had to go back and use a real toilet (how boring!).

Simon with the snacks and drinks

Socks

I'd never been up on the highest part of the roof before, mainly because I'm sensible (scared) but the boys were all experts as they'd been up before so stood sniggering while I tried to climb up without plummeting onto the concrete below. It felt really high up when we were on the roof - which i suppose it was - and we all had collective heart attacks when someone went too close to the edge - that person was never me, I was just imagining myself falling over the edge so I stayed in the middle.

Peeg and I on the roof

We stayed on the roof for a couple of hours, just drinking and talking, imagining what we would say to the police , if for some reason they turned up and demanded us to get down, then Si, Peeg and Sock's got all interested in the sky and pretended to be talking knowledgable about the plow etc ... I'm pretty sure non of them knew what they were talking about.

Next day I found lucozade bottles and beer cans scattered on the street below where the wind had blown them off the roof as we had been too lazy to take them down with us. Si also had to go back on the roof in the morning to retrieve his wallet.

Amateur star gazing

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.