This past weekend the ALBOS family hitched up our caravan and travelled the 20 miles up the road to Rode Hall for the family based Just So Festival
Despite being seasoned caravaners, we’d never stayed away at a festival, especially not with our two young children! When we received details of the 2018 event, we decided as a family that this was going to be our first festival.
The event is run by the community interest company, Wild Rumpus, who are headquartered on the Rode Hall estate. The festival is billed as:
An annual weekend-long camping festival for children and their families. The festival provides a magical experience where art, music and literature are embedded and entwined in a beautiful and wondrous landscape.
The camping opened at 12 pm on the Friday with festival gates opening at 2 pm, this gives keen campers a chance to find a spot and get pitched up before the fun begins. If you’re camping, then you may have a walk from the car park to your camping spot, as you do at most festivals. You can bring your own festival trolley, but there are also some for hire to help with the lugging.
There are over 250 events on offer over the three-night weekend so a programme is must purchase, ideally buy this in advance so that you can make a plan on what you’re doing when.
As we passed through the main Just So Festival entrance we had our first encounter with the Tribal Leaders. Each year visitors are encouraged to join a tribe, to win golden pebbles that get converted to points. There were seven tribes on offer, Bees, Foxes, Stags, Fish, Frogs, Owls and Lions and we swore allegiance to team Fox! Dressing up is recommended and whole families took part in dressing up as their particular tribe.
Inside the event is split into various areas, each themed and beautifully set within the grounds of Rode Hall.
From simple visual attractions and art installations to full-on performances, there was enough to keep the entire family entertained over the three days!
To see some of the things on offer take a look back at our previous article about the 2018 programme, but highlights for us were a massive pillow fight, a nighttime tightrope performance, entertainment by the campfire (including toasting marshmallows) and the Footlights music area.
For chilling out we enjoyed sitting in the music field or heading into the games barn. It was a great way to spend quality family time, unplugged from the outside world!
The whole weekend was an amazing and magical experience and one that we as a family won’t forget for a very long time! Our children’s faces were a picture all weekend and they loved all that was on offer, it was truly a magical festival for the little people.
Food and drink on site was excellent with a range to suit all tastes and all budgets. You are welcome to bring your own food for those who would rather spend less or for those people who prefer to make their own food.
Facilities on site and in the camp grounds were much better than we anticipated. There was plenty of free, fresh drinking water available throughout the site and camping areas, and you are encouraged to bring and fill up a water container. We did bring ours but we also bought metal Just So festival logo ones that were very reasonably priced at £4. There were also plenty of toilet blocks and porta-loos, shower blocks, dish washing and waste disposal facilities.
The site was ran very slickly by the various teams including a large volutneer workforce who worked tirelessly replenishing supplies of toilet roll etc and made sure the site remained clean and secure for the families staying there. We were very impressed to see the showers being cleaned and made sparkly again during the day and the toilets near our caravan remained in pretty good condition and even had toilet roll on the Monday morming as we left the site
2019 is the 10th anniversary of the Just So Festival and we can’t wait to take our family back! Early bird tickets will be on sale early 2019 and we’ll let you all know when they’re released!
