Wilderness Is Not A Luxury But A Necessity Of The Human Spirit

That Time I Went To A Hippy Dippy Festival And Cried (Twice)

Hello, dear readers.

I am in a state of peace-like zen.  Partly due to the lovely weather:


But mostly due to Wilderness Festival.

Wilderness is a festival in Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire this year from 4th August to 7th August 2016.  This year was the sixth season it has been running and, my word, did they pull out all the stops.

When Wilderness was first created in 2011, it was described as a festival to celebrate the arts and the outdoors. The self-proclaimed ideal was to "bring together reciprocal talents, passion to build transformative experiences with a deep love of artistry and artisans."

Which all sounds a bit pretentious written down in black and white like that.

BUT, it was amazing.

Between music, dancing, tequila shots, yoga, bubbletea, Moroccan lamb wraps, making your own jewelry, adventuring into the forest, talks, wild swimming and Portaloos as far as the eye could see...there was never a chance to be bored.

Just have a look at the basic programme if you needed more convincing!

And, because I'm a lovely person, I thought I would share my experience with you all, dear readers.  So you can relive the magic as if you were there.

Thursday

Late.  I am always late.

However, Thursday I was actually up, packed and on time, wearing my wrist band, deciding whether I was cool enough for a bumbag (or if not whether I could get away with wearing one 'ironically') and waiting for my friend (who we shall lovingly call "Ker-Bear").

A selection of the goodies the Amazon fairy brought...

Ker-Bear was not so on time.

So, whilst I waited for her arrival the Glorious was treated to a much-needed clean given the amount of bird poo that adorned the passenger window, door and left hand side of the windscreen.

Beauty!

(As an aside; there is a very poorly bird near the BF's house that needs medical attention. Stat.)

In any event, Ker-Bear arrived and we promptly packed the Glorious to get under way.

Away we go!

Upon arriving at Cornbury Park (after one hilariously wrong turn), we soon came to the conclusion that we I had brought a lot of stuff.

And therefore Mathilda the Trolley was necessary!

My new best friend.

After about 40 minutes of unpacking, convincing the security man at the gate that we had really stuck to the alcohol limit (and his look of incredulity that someone actually abides by festival rules - lawyers #amiright), we had managed to organise our home for the next three nights.

Not too shabby!

After a brief respite, we decided to go for an explore into the Festival arena.  I did not realise how much space the Festival would cover.

Ker-Bear has an UP wrist band that tracks her steps over the day and tells her how much exercise she has done (I will not be getting one as I don't need any more things in my life explicitly showing that I am exceedingly lazy tyvm). And each day we would end up walking about 20,000 steps.  Which I'm sure doesn't sound too impressive until you realise that Ker-Bear's target was only 11,000.

We wandered around to get our bearings and decided on some key activities for the weekend:

1. Make your own silver ring;
2. Enter the Spirit Forest walk; and
3. Yoga at some point in time.

When we returned to camp for an early bed time, we discovered that someone had unceremoniously pitched up pretty much in front of our door.

At first, we didn't mind as it meant that at least no one was going to pitch their tent any closer so we still had a bit of space for our chairs and the camp mates seemed friendly enough.  So we assumed that this was a Good Thing.

Oh, how wrong we were.

Friday morning 3.00am

SHUT UP. SHUT UP. SHUTUP.SHUTUP.

It's amazing how quickly that mantra makes you feel like you are going insane.

The Camp Mates turned out to be Camp Horrors.

From 12-3am (ish) they screamed, shouted, played music and in general just were raucous (NOT what we had been expecting from such a Hippy Dippy festival thank you very much).

The true ramifications of this un-Godly behaviour would only become apparent to me in the respectable hours of the  morning.

Actual Friday morning 

(6.30am - the dawn light has arrived.  Inside a tent the condensation has started to gather and the occupants are acutely aware that the sun is definitely shining as they are cooking like boil in the bag rice. Lights up on a dozy AJ) 

KB: Amy? (From the other side of fly netting)

AJ: Yeah?

KB: I'm going to go for a shower and see what they are like.

AJ: Mm-hmm. See you later.

(KB toddles off in search of warm water.  Half an hour later KB returns and AJ is fully awake)

AJ: Alright, KB? Did you sleep okay?

(KB stares at AJ in horrified disbelief.  Her expression is clear 'Is that supposed to be some kind of sick joke?'  AJ belatedly senses the storm coming her way and braces for impact) 

KB: Right, let's just start this off with: I'm not a morning person anyway. So I'm already not happy. But I think I got about 2 hours sleep last night because of these idiots next door. (AJ refrains from pointing out that they are in a tent and The Idiots Next Door can probably hear this conversation fairly clearly). And I'm pretty sure they were doing drugs.  I heard them talking about coke and lines so that's fun. (AJ also refrains from pointing out that that is probably why they were awake so late.) And I was absolutely freezing (AJ refrains from pointing out that she had previously warned KB about the cool night temperatures. AJ is impressed with her ability to filter brain to mouth so early in the morning). And at one point about 3am I genuinely thought 'I can't do this and Amy is going to have to take me home'.  So no, I did not sleep okay and I feel shit.

(AJ ponders this for a moment and is slightly alarmed by KB's response as she is distressed and KB  is AJ's friend. Because AJ is the British-est thing to ever have Britished the next sentence pops out almost unthinkingly)

AJ: Well...shall we have some breakfast and a cup of tea? That might make you feel better.

(So they do.  And because KB is also the Britishest thing to ever have Britished; it works).

After (magic-weekend-saving) breakfast we headed into the festival with our picnic blankets and our water bottles.  First item of the day was Enter the Spirit Forest.  We went to the meeting point and saw lots of people milling about so we joined their group and followed them into the forest.

Where we entered the Land of the Fae and attended the Wychwood Ball by mistake.  Which we were supposed to pay for.

Whoops.

But it was awesome - it made us laugh, it made us me cry and it was a great start to what had not been a good day so far.

Also there was a really straight tree and KB was slightly worried by the amount of tree comments I made throughout the weekend.

Next on the to-do list was make our silver rings.

After we had bashed them with some hammers... #noshavingabovetheknee

The finished product!

Friday night we ended up watching Robert Plant for a while before meandering amongst the other bands and dancers that were around the Festival. We also marvelled at all the guests' clothes - the feathers, sequins, face paints and the bare legs.

Seriously, how do people survive the cold nights in shorts and crop tops!?  This is a mystery that I will never solve.

Because we are old people, we stripped off our multitudes of jumpers, I handed KB jogging bottoms and a fleece and we were in bed by 11pm.  Hoping for a slightly less disturbed night's sleep.

It was not to be. dear readers.

...To be continued.

(This is already a fairly long Blog Post so I will do Part 2 and 3 (Saturday and Sunday) in a separate post.)

&&Fin.