Wednesday 15th until Sunday 19th July 2009 @ Larmer Tree Gardens, Salisbury
Featuring Performances From: Zong Zing All Stars, Baskery, The Imagined Village, DJ Derek

And so as the heavens opened we headed to another summer festival, this time Larmer Tree. Now they say it’s near Salisbury, so off to Salisbury we drove, only to be told we were still about 20 miles away! We had to drive down the longest country road without any signs meaning it took double the time it should have, but after several wrong turns and a series of arguments, we finally arrived! I will be buying a Sat Nav very soon…

What we had arrived at was Larmer Tree Gardens, from which the festival gets its strange name; a beautiful, Victorian pleasure gardens complete with stunning black and white cottages, forests or the ‘Lostwood’ full of storytelling, poetry and written word classes and we even saw a peacock regally strolling around, checking out the bands.

We had arrived just in time for a free tractor ride up to the festival and this gave us our first indication of Larmer Tree’s style; the ratio of children to adults was about 10:4! We were understandably slightly apprehensive. Not counting all the kids running around, the average age was about 45 and so as 22 year olds we felt slightly out of place. We didn’t let it hold us back though and embraced the fun family vibe!

The first band we saw were the Zong Zing All Stars, a band from The Democratic Republic Of Congo. They were lively and got the crowd on their feet and it helped that the sun was finally making an appearance at this point. After a tasty local pizza from Pizza Tabun, we caught Swedish band Baskery, who sounded a bit like The Pixies although their banter left a lot to be desired, and then folk band The Imagined Village on the main stage. As well as music from around the world there was also some good local music including Bristol legend DJ Derek who went down a storm!

We had a quick count up and decided there were at least six different festivals on this weekend, plus any we didn’t know about, so really you have no excuse. Whatever you are into festival-wise, there is something out there to suit all tastes, you just need to sniff them out! As for Larmer Tree, if you like the much smaller, more civilised festival with a strong family atmosphere, get yourselves down here next year – just make sure you take a map with you!

www.larmertreefestival.co.uk

Harriet Robinson