Rosie Henderson and the Hung family relive the highs and lows of festival life at Lakefest 2015.

Great British Life: Rosie and Gary at Lakefest 2015Rosie and Gary at Lakefest 2015 (Image: Archant)

Sun, cider and Squaws!

What another awesome weekend we had at the family-friendly festival Lakefest. Based at Croft Farm Leisure park only 10 minutes from the M5, this fab festival certainly packed a punch this year with its great line up (which enabled us to re-live some of our youth), tasty local food and the cider too of course.

This year I sampled their scrummy pie & mash, the perfect choice to soak up any alcohol and with a very reasonable price tag. The musical highlights for my husband and I were Embrace, Ash, and our firm favourites the Roving Crows which had everyone up and dancing. And this year’s fancy dress theme was Wild-Wild West which we of course fully embraced basking in our Indian outfits in the glorious sunshine on Saturday.

The campsite has glorious views over the Bredon Hills which were especially spectacular at sunset. The only camping issues we sadly encountered this year was the lack of water points as campers only had one tap for the whole field which isn’t ideal when you have RVs filling up, family’s trying to wash up, and filling up water bottles. We would recommend a washing up point with steel sinks and three taps per water point to help relieve the massive queues for water on such a hot weekend. We also struggled to find a water point by the main stage.

Great British Life: Rosie Henderson, Wild-Wild West fancy dress, Lakefest 2015Rosie Henderson, Wild-Wild West fancy dress, Lakefest 2015 (Image: Archant)

The queue for a shower wasn’t too bad but we would recommend that they look to hire showers which include a wash basin so that you can easily clean your teeth in the morning and at night. The toilets this year were great as they were in large cubicles set on an angle - when you got inside you could easily fit an adult (including Indian headdress) and a child too – which we experienced when we helped our friends by taking their little ones to the toilet!

I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend going to this great festival next year which we believe will be moving to Eastnor Castle.

Rosie Henderson, Cotswold Life

Great British Life: Rosie, Lili, Pam, Rheya, Johnny and Gary, Wild-Wild West Fancy DressRosie, Lili, Pam, Rheya, Johnny and Gary, Wild-Wild West Fancy Dress (Image: Archant)

Family Fun & Frolics!

We were fortunate enough to attend Lakefest this weekend as a family (our daughters are two and five years old). We have previously attended larger family orientated festivals but we felt that Lakefest offered an intimate and relaxed experience. We enjoyed the children’s area with the crafts, stores and activities. We loved how close we could be to the music at the main stage which at a larger festival, can only really be viewed on the TV screen when attending with small children.

The atmosphere of Lakefest was welcoming and at no point did we feel anxious our children would be too far away or caught up in crowds of people or rowdy elements. And because everything was so close, this made even the often arduous task of hiking from the car park to the campsite a short stroll! There was plenty of musical choice with four stages and we also had great fun dancing around outside one of the vendors with the other festival goers, enjoying the upbeat, fun tunes being pumped out! The ‘Secret disco’ offered party people a dance venue – but not until too late, which was considerate as it was close to the camp site.

The lakeside setting was most tranquil, just sitting there for the sunset was very ambient and relaxing - another unique experience of this festival. What was indeed pleasing was the pricing of drinks, which was surprising good, a lot of festivals will hugely over charge for alcoholic beverages. We also loved the fact that you had to use the reusable plastic pint cups – very environmentally friendly and a super souvenir.

There was a large selection of stalls selling clothing, hats and headband wreaths, which gave the festival goers a chance to do a bit of retail therapy! Over the three-day weekend we did try pretty much every food vendor there. Food was varied; however pricing generally was reasonable within the context of festival venues. We particular enjoyed the £5 paella and the Caribbean curried goat, rice and peas at £7.50.

If I were to make any suggestions moving forward I would prioritise these two messages: there should be toilets introduced to the children’s field. As anyone with young kids will tell you, children go from not needing a wee to bladder shredding desperation in the blink of an eye! At which point you had to leave the children’s area, travel to the main field and join the queue whilst hoping that your child would not wet themselves in the process. The toilets were not well indicated either, which meant asking around for them the first time we needed them.

My second point would be access to water. The weekend was gloriously hot and this added to the wonderful experience we had. However, even if it had been cold and damp we would have still needed adequate access to fresh drinking water. On the first day I asked an official where I could fill up my water bottles for the children and I was advised that the water point was back in the camping field. I duly trotted off back through security to source some water. After a little hunt and asking for further directions I found the tap. I wish I had a photo of the signage as it was pretty small and not visible at any distance. Additionally there was only one tap for the entire camping area – including motorhomes etc. This cold water was also supposed to service our washing up needs too! As you can imagine the queue here was monstrous. I did later discover that there was in fact a drinking water point inside the venue next to the first aid tent. Again the signage was woefully inadequate. They should certainly consider having large signs above the toilets and water so that people can easily find them.

All in all we had a super time. We heard some good music over an excellent range of genres, we had plenty to engage our girls, add in the beautiful weather and the lovely location, and it’s safe to say that overall we had had a marvellous festival experience.

The Hung Family – Pam, Johnny, Lili and Rheya

www.lakefest.co.uk