Livestock Music Festival with Children

My first experience of taking children to a music festival

The strange thing about being a blogger is that people you don’t know, start to get to know you, I’m still not sure how I feel about that!

Well one of the things I love is music and especially live music. I went to my first gig when I was 17, Bryan Adams at the Cornwall Coliseum with T’Pau supporting (anyone under about 40 will have no idea who that is!) and went to Glastonbury when there was only 30,000 people there, not 130,000 like we see now. So it may be a surprise to learn that it has taken me until my girls are 10 and 11 to muster up the courage to take them to a festival.

To be honest it’s been a selfish thing, to me a festival is about staying up late, dancing, drinking and generally forgetting about mundane life stuff – personally this does not fit with being responsible for two young children, worrying that, in the worst case, they might wander off and meet the child snatcher, or just complain the music is too loud,  they can’t see, they need food (when alcohol would sustain me) want to be carried and ideally should be in bed at 9.30 or you suffer the consequences the next day.

Oh and by the way, hubby does not share my live music love (ask me about the James Blunt gig), so no sharing of the childcare responsibility.  So read on to learn more about my solo music festival experience with children.

Tip One  –  Don’t Rush

Luckily we were in no rush as the traffic was terrible, the joy of summer travel in the UK.  We made it in good time and chose the quiet camping field. Try to allow enough time to get there, set up your tent or van and still see the Friday night acts.  The camping was just two fields walk to reach the main festival.

Tip Two – find a small festival for your first event

Livestock in Longdon it turns out, is only in its second year and still small (5,000 tickets), but for me it was perfectly formed.

For my first trip with the girls the thought of coping with 30,000  plus people and miles to walk to the campsite was not what I was looking for.  

 

A pint of G&T – check!

Tip Four – Find a Programme

Sunday was a lazy start with bacon butties an essential part of any camping experience. Back on the festival field the girls spent the day making made festival craft bags, dream catchers and cards with a crafty fairy. Later they listened to story telling, watched a fun science show and joined the animal encounters (a giant tortoise, a snake and a bearded dragon to pet).

It’s always good to get  a programme when you first arrive as some activities may need to be pre-booked.

Also free was a climbing wall – it was so great knowing there were things for them to do that didn’t cost extra and the site was small enough for me to let them wander about on their own, while I was able to relax and listen to the music with a cup of proper coffee.

Sadly the same could not be said about Sunday night’s headliner, oh dear I’m going to upset some folk I’m sure, but Jason Donovan just did not work out well after all the fun we’d been having  – with his tan and a Miami Vice white suit, those 80s ballads and Joseph ‘any dream will do” rendition (which we got twice) were sadly short of the mark and aside from a few enthusiastic fans the rest of us were wishing Chesney or The Lottery Winners would come back and liven the scene up again. For those without young kids, the final disco was soon in full swing and I’m sure Jason quickly became a distant memory. I was just happy that we had survived the whole festival in good spirits.