Limetree Festival 2011
Mookychick loves the Limetree Festival – cheap, quirky, hippy and genuinely friendly with an intimate feel and genuine surprises. And weekend tickets were only £25! Try it in 2012…
Ive inherited from my dad the belief that everyone should go to a festival at some point in their lives. I wouldnt call it a right of passage (like your first drunken night) so much as an experience (like, well, any drunken night). Usually an amazing experience.
Ive been to three major weekend festivals now; Lollapalooza 2009, Leeds 2010 and Glastonbury 2011 and have found all three fantastic. But while many people I know went to Leeds 2011, I went to Limetree 2011 in Grewelthorpe, North Yorkshire. Limetree is a UK festival created to bring back what festivals used to be like; cheap, relaxed and so very hippy. The tickets were definitely cheap: under 18s could get a weekend ticket for £25, which was great for my friends unable to fork out nearly £200 for Leeds. However I decided against paying £4 for some chilli nachos. Thats one thing I dislike about festivals – food tends to be pricy.
And it was very relaxed because it was in desperate need of more people. Not too many more, otherwise it would lose its charm, but a few more faces wouldnt go amiss. But the good thing was you could be less worried about getting anything stolen. Someone did try to steal my tiger hat, but off the top of my head, and he was planning on giving me his hat in exchange.
And there were hippies in the most amazing outfits wandering about. Also a lovely hippy cafe called The Hungry Elephant which served coffee for £1 along with a slab of hemp cake. The hemp cake turned out to be overly syrupy flapjack with 3% hemp seeds- not recommended. My favourite thing about the entire festival was that it was the friendliest one I’ve ever been to. People would randomly start talking to you nearly all the time, and as I’m terribly shy I love people who are like that. Even the local village pub – where my friends and I would take refuge from the rain at times – had friendly people, even though the pub was situated in a peaceful, middle class village and we were unwashed messes.
But what of the music? No big acts, but most of it was decent ,if not really good. The chances are Ive seen some acts that are going to do really well. Give Wilful Missing a listen people! And the grand finale was not Guns n Roses, or Beyonce, but the Limetree Festival Family band which included the founder of Limetree singing onstage, including a love song to his wife (awww). And I’m a sucker for things that are made personal.
So I would definitely recommend it to people. I was with a big group of people that included two of my friends who were festival virgins, and it was ideal for one of them who isnt keen on massive crowds and loud music (I still managed to find a heavy rock band playing, to her joy), and kids who could be kept safe and entertained as there were many activities for the little uns. And it definitely had its lively moments with dance tents, two silent discos every night and people in their teens and twenties.
All it needs to make it better is more people, and a few more attractions. If youve never been to a small festival before, or indeed any festival, or money is being a bytch, then do consider it one year, and bring lots of layers and a waterproof. Its a quirky little festival and wins the non-existing prize of British festival with the coolest name.
