Secret Garden Party 2011

One adventure I have embarked on this summer is a long weekend at the Secret Garden Party with my friend Cher. It is an enchanting, surreal, quirky festival, and really has your heart and soul at the centre of it all.

It was, as I said, a very long weekend. We arrived on Thursday, late morning time and left about 2am on the Sunday night. Arriving home, very tired and in desperate need of a shower, but feeling like it was every bit worth it.

The festival started off with a 2 hour queue in the car, whilst needing a wee for most of the time, it was not fun!

However, we had SGP radio to keep us going and it really got us in the festival mood and in great anticipation of the weekend ahead.

We finally managed to get into the festival, after dragging all our stuff to the campsite (a lot of effort for 2 girls who seemed to have managed to pack enough clothes, food etc. for a month). We put up the tent, only to realise just how small the tent was and with all our belongings inside, it seemed even smaller.

 The next few nights to come were definitely going to be cramped and uncomfortable, but surely it's all part of the festival experience?

After a quick a refreshment, we ventured off to explore the festival.. but before we could leave, we got ambushed by our 'tent next door neighbours' and had our faces painted. 

A preview for just how friendly and giving everyone was there.

Here we are with our painted eyes.. the red is lipstick and proved very hard to get off that night!

 Here are a few pictures of some of the art pieces in the festival.
(Many others appear through out this post)

Thursday was over very fast and after our busy day of putting the tent up we were extremely tired, so we found ourselves settling down to sleep at about 10 (the earliest I've been to bed in months!!)
It was as expected, a very long night, full of noise, people managing to stand on our tent (!) and the frustrating need to want to straighten your legs in the tent, but not being able to with out your feet sticking out the door!

The morning found us very early (7am), with aches all over and tired eyes, but we were still very excited for the day ahead of exploring and band watching.

Here I am stood outside our tent (yes it is leaning! The perils of people not being able to see a bight orange tent!)
I am wearing a matching dress (€8 from Oxfam, Mullingar, Ireland)

Unfortunately, Friday bought some rain in the evening, below is the sky of impending doom!

I wasn't too happy about the rain

Poncho time! 

The end of Friday and almost the whole of Saturday we went through a period of forgetting to take pictures, also on Saturday almost everyone had an energy drop, so a lot of time was spent in the tent or in the car charging our phones! 

We visited a tent called 'Mind Apples', where you could write 5 things that you do every day that makes your mind happy!

Below are mine!

Sunday: it was our last day and we managed to fit in so much!

After awaking very early again.. we made our daily morning trip to the car to charge our phones and have a little peace and quiet away from the main festival.
We then made our way to the Artful Badger area, which is an area of woodland, which was like an adult adventure playground.

Here I am, not looking too happy in the woodland! (I don't know why)

The man playing the piano created a lovely atmosphere in this woodland area as the sounds of the piano echoed all around the woods.

I do not know what I was doing here.. maybe an impression of Spider Man.. 

Our plans for Sunday included attending a free Yoga and Meditation session.. so whilst we waiting for it to start, we watched this man on the sand stage.
He was very good and sounded a lot like Jack Black (Tenacious D)

 It was finally time to go to Yoga.. here we are in the tent.

The Yoga was very relaxing and soothing on our aching bodies (from our tent situation!) 

Drinking a well deserved cup of ginger tea!

In the afternoon, we got our faces painted by the lake, by one of the most talented face-painters(?) I have seen in my life.

 Straight after we watched Benjamin Francis Leftwich on the 'Where The Wild Things Are' stage.

We are both quite big fans of him, after seeing him earlier this year in Cambridge.

His performance was extremely good.

Here's one of the songs he performed, Butterfly Culture, which is such a beautiful song.

 Unfortunately, the two main artists I wanted to see (Benjamin Francis Leftwich and The Bees), overlapped each other. So straight after Benjamin we ran to catch the end of The Bees, praying they hadn't played my favourite song by them!!!

 Thankfully, it was the last song they played.

Here is a video of part of it.. sorry for the jigging around. I was dancing a lot!

Straight after The Bees followed the famous SGP paint fight.. we happened to be in the right place at the right time as we ended up right in the middle of it.

This is not my video, but I was somewhere in the middle of this!!

Post Paint-fight

 Yes, I was unfortunate enough to be hit by a red paint bomb.. and made to look like I have extreme sunburn!!

So, that was the end of the festival.. we stayed for a while in the evening and hung around with a few people we met there.. Sunday evening was very quiet as literally everything stopped at 12.

All in all, it was an amazing festival, full of memories I will hold with me forever.
I will definitely be finding myself there next year!

I have taken some pictures on a couple of film cameras and I am waiting to get these developed, so more pictures will be up soon!

 Julie

xx

PS. If anyone see's this 'Is Land' floating around, please let the SGP organisers know..

Check out the full story here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/aug/02/missing-inflatable-island-secret-garden