Family-Friendly Festivals: Latitude Festival

It was perfect festival weather – moments of blazing sunshine alternated with torrential rain. One minute we’d be slathering the kids with sunscreen, the next we’d be giggling as we all huddled together under our plastic-bottomed picnic blanket, upturned to provide shelter from the onslaught.

When my novelist husband was invited to read at the sell-out Latitude festival near Southwold in Suffolk, I had no doubts that it would be the ideal first full-on festival for our kids (we’d been to music festivals before, but only for a few hours at a time) – it had a children’s area with masses of events and activities, and a dedicated family campsite with events to keep kids occupied in the mornings before the festival program got going. Although we didn’t end up staying on the family site, because our passes allowed us into the Performers and Guests sites, we heard good reports about it from some of the many other parents who attended. But wherever we went, the atmosphere was laidback and friendly, with very little beery or leery behaviour. All human life was there, from hippy parents with dreadlocked four-year-olds to Rizla-wielding students and the celebrity likes of Richard Curtis, David Soul and Irvine Welsh.

The kids were enchanted from the moment we arrived, on the Friday night, when, after pitching our tent, we headed down through the wooded slopes lit by fairylights and populated by elves (okay, they were stewards in disguise, but let’s not spoil the fun) to the lake, where giant floodlit waterlilies floated serenely while sheep, dyed pink for no apparent reason, grazed on the banks. As Franz Ferdinand belted out from the main arena, we munched on the unsurprisingly expensive but surprisingly good-quality festival food from one of the many stalls before heading back to our tent.

Over the remainder of the weekend we inevitably spent the highest proportion of our time in the children’s area, where our oldest boys enjoyed learning circus skills, hunting for bugs in the woods, creating mud faces on tree trunks, pond-dipping (their favourite), playing in giant Wendy houses filled with straw, and bouncing on trampolines. The security here was reassuringly high, with stewards refusing entry to people without kids or with alcohol and handing out kids’ wristbands for parents to write their numbers on (a necessity: we saw plenty of children who’d become separated from their parents). When the rain took hold or we needed some down-time, there was a chill-out/play tent for parents and young kids, providing free coffee and tea, squash, bananas, sunscreen and even books to take back to your tents. In the evenings, there was a special bedtime story in the main Literature Tent, during which all the kids were invited onto the stage to act out scenes from Horrible Henry.
Without this children’s area, my kids certainly wouldn’t have made it through a three-day festival, though we did catch some music en famille – the boys liked underground Belgian rock heroes dEUS (loud and fast) but pronounced pixie-like US singer and harpist Joanna Newsom (one of the highlights of the festival for us) ‘bad, bad, bad’. Otherwise, for the evening performances, my husband and I contented ourselves with taking it in turns to stay in the tent with the sleeping boys while the other nipped out to watch a band – we’d planned on keeping them up late (they fancied the 9.30pm bat-hunts in the woods)  but they didn’t lie-in in the mornings due to light in the tent and the campsite comings and goings and were exhausted.

For me the best moment came on the Sunday night, when I crept out with my youngest, six-month-old Zac, to see Blondie. Dancing with a pint of cider in my hand and a sleeping baby in a carrier on my chest, I revelled in seeing one of my idols, now an astonishing 63, perform as energetically as she did in her prime – inspirational stuff. Then I walked back to the tent so my husband could nip out to see Interpol and The Tindersticks. 

Exhausted and dirty (we gave up on the two-hour queues for the showers) but happy, we arrived home late on the Monday night feeling that the five-hour drive had been worth it and that we’d definitely like to return to Latitude next year. Ideally, though, I’d want to go in a camper-van as well as take a tent – then we’d have not only our own shower but a reason to avoid the festival loos (not fun at any time, but especially unpleasant with little kids). We’d also arrange to go with friends with kids as many other people had done, so the kids would have familiar playmates (we intended to do this but our friends were unable to make it at the last minute). For more tips on making the most of festivals with children, click here.

Going to a festival for three nights (out of a possible four in the case of Latitude) made us feel like we’d been on a little holiday, and so it should, for the price – this is not an inexpensive weekend away, in spite of the camping. A weekend camping ticket cost £130 per adult this year, with under-13s free. Factor in your petrol costs, meals if you don’t cook for yourself, beer and other drinks, ice creams, a program (£8) and other bits and bobs (you might fancy a massage, for instance), and you might find yourself with little change from £500.