The Sunflower Festival

Last weekend (third weekend in August) I went to the Sunflower Festival which was held at Tubbys Farm, just outside Hillsborough. Having never been to this kind of festival before I was nervous and excited at the prospect. I’m a fan of live music anyway but I’m a fairly sensible Mum who has the odd glass of red, partying was something I did a long time ago when I had more energy. I wasn’t sure if I’d fit in or if I’d be ridiculed for being there, but I need not have worried at all, it was very welcoming and friendly.

I arrived far too early. I’d anticipated some sort of mad rush to get the best camping spots but in the end I was there before official opening times and was almost mistaken for a volunteer. I nearly got a purple wrist band and a job to do! Actually volunteering would be a good experience and something I might do next year.

When I arrived on the family campsite it wasn’t all that clear where I was to pitch the tent. This was partly because the signs hadn’t all been put up yet, and partly because I didn’t believe that the waist high barley crop should be pitched in. I chose a pitch amongst some trees instead but then other people started arriving and pitching amongst the barley. The place where we had pitched was seriously bumpy so we moved later that day to the barley too.

I had deliberatly taken an old tent to the festival. Not an old ‘retro’ tent as I really value those when I get my hands on one, but a five or six year old dome vis a vis with a busted, taped up pole and a tear in the fabric near the door. It’s not particularly valuable and it’s been well used to the point of almost delamination so I wasn’t too concerned if it got damaged or muddy. I was astounded by all the ‘good’ tents that people had brought with them, there were lots and lots of the Pagoda style Quechua 4.2’s and even one of the new model that replaced the pagoda style one (which is not as pretty in my opinion). There were large Outwells and Bell tents too, so there was no need to bring an old, nearly done tent. I could have brought my Vango Icarus and been able to stand upright! I’ll know for next year....

I really love this tent. It's the Quechua BS 4.2 and I'd like one as they're being discontinued.

There were three stages, a main stage, a campfire stage and a barn stage. The music was scheduled in such a way that when the main stage was between sets the other two were active. This meant that the sound from the main stage didn’t encroach on the music from the other two, which were quite far away from each other. The campfire stage was my favourite, built in such a way to face a slope which had logs dotted around to sit on, and a large campfire was lit when the sun went down.

Campfire Stage

Pay*ola

 

  



Swannee River



Nasa Assassin

My Festival Loo

As projects go this is certainly not a large or complicated one. For camping I have a Kampa Khazi which is a proper camp loo, it has a inner bucket with a lid and a proper loo seat and lid as well. It's extremely useful at night time and lives in the corner of the tent with a blanket thrown over it.

But at a Festival you don't have the luxury of parking beside the tent, and although the Kampa Khazi isn't heavy it is bulky and also, it looks like a loo - and I have to carry that to the tent with everyone knowing what it is.

So I went out to my favourite cheapie shop, B&M Bargains, and bought a waste paper bin with a clip on lid, and a kiddies padded loo seat. I took off the plastic ring under the seat as unfortunately it did not fit the rim of the bin. I then put the screws back in they stopped the seat from sliding about.

Cost:

£1.99 for the bin with lid

£2.49 for the kiddies loo seat

Over all cost: £4.48

I have anti-bacterial wipes and will bring wet wipes, hand sanitiser and some loo roll. I will line it with bio-degradable bags and discard and I may also recycle the whole thing at the festival if they have the facilities to do so and I don't want to take it home. I'll play that by ear.

Popping the festival cherry this time.

This time next week we'll be some hours into our first ever festival. The one we are going to is called the Sunflower Festival and it's held at Tubbys Farm, quite near Hillsborough which is just outside Belfast.

So I've been swatting up on Festival hints and tips, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Like, do I really need to worry so much about the state of the toilets? This festival I'm going to is quite small, and I hope to camp in the Family Field so it couldn't be too bad, could it?

I've decided to take my old Royal Tarn 4 tent, it's a vis a vis with a separate groundsheet. It's not a very valuable or favoured tent, but it ticks a few boxes. The loose groundsheet can be peeled back to give a wellie boot area if the ground is muddy outside, it's stand up height in the middle, big enough for three chairs (just about) and has two separate bedrooms which are large enough to store bags as well as hold sleeping mats and bedding. The front door also poles out to make a tarp, so it's possible to sit with the door open and look out even if it's raining. The rubber mat from outside my front door will be useful, along with a dirt trapper mat inside the tent.

I'm not planning to take the camp loo as it's quite bulky and I don't want to carry it from the car to the tent. I'd like something more discreet, a bucket with a lid that doesn't look like it's for wees?

I am really looking forward to this Festival but nervous at the same time! Wish me luck!

Mannix Point, final blog instalment

I'm having too much fun writing this blog now, especially now I've got the hang of posting pictures! Expect a lot more as I go into tent withdrawal mode.

The rest of our holiday was spent visiting new places and finding new beaches. We spent some time exploring Valentia Island, which is accessed across a bridge from the fishing village of Portmagee, about 10 miles south from the campsite.

From Portmagee over to Valentia Island

Portmagee

Valentia Island is 11 miles long and 3 miles wide, and has a permanent population of 650. It has a principle town called Knightstown, and a smaller settlement called Chapeltown. When you drive over the bridge from Portmagee, you turn right to go to Knightstown. From there a short Ferry can be caught back to the mainland, a point close to the campsite again. So in this way is a circuitous drive and a very scenic one at that. The Ferry is good value at six Euro, although it lasts for about 5 minutes before you cross the channel to the mainland again.

Ferry from Knightstown to Renard Point

Valentia Island is noted most famously for being the eastern terminus for the Transatlantic Telegraph Cable. The first official message was passed from Queen Victoria to the then President of the United States on the 16th of August 1858. The short message took 20 minutes to transmit.

Knightsbridge is therefore a Victorian town, quite out of place in this part of rural Ireland. It was a community dedicated to the cable and provided housing, schooling and worship in the Church of Ireland church at the head of the town.

Housing built by the Anglo-American Telegraph Company

Valentia Island, indeed the surrounding coast on the mainland, is full of slate. There is a slate quarry on Valentia Island itself, still being worked. It is on the tourist trail because of a religious grotto that is set up in the entrance, and of course the surrounding views are outstanding.

The Slate Quarry at Valentia Island

And of course Valentia Island has views, in abundance. Here's a selection of them....

We also had a couple of days out at the beach. We found a few different beaches but our favourite was Derrynane Beach, about 20 miles south of the campsite. Just off the coast is 'Abbey Island' with a ruin of a church and the remains of a graveyard all around it. We went midweek and virtually had the place to ourselves. The day was overcast but the temperatures were mild so we decided a swim was in order. But the sea is blummin' cold and it would take a hardier soul than me to go anything more than waist deep, and I think I did well to go that deep!

Derrynane Beach

Other highlights of the holiday was visiting the two stone forts which are very close to the village of Caherciveen. They have been partially reconstructed, but the inner sections of each fort are the remains of a Roundhouse and each dated from 500BC. These are incredibly ancient settlements, fortified, and with steps up the inside of the fortifications so that they could see over the top.

Cahergall Stone Fort

Cahergall Stone Fort, now often used for music events

Leacanbuaile Stone Fort

Using the tent as a base to explore around the coast of Co. Kerry

After the first few days were we did very little except chill and and recover from the ordeal of getting there, we started to explore out and about. First stop was a castle we could see from the campsite, we had no idea how to get there but we just drove in the general direction and found it easily.

Ballycarberry Castle

The side of the castle facing the sea

Mannix Point continued - welcome to the Twilight Zone

I read some reviews about Mannix Point Campsite before I went, to be honest they were the sole reason for choosing this site. One of the comments said that Mannix Point is like a Twilight Zone, you lose track of time. Another said it was like the 'Hotel California', as the famous track goes, ''...you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave'' but in a good way (not a creepy way as the song suggests).

Well I did lose track of time, and what day it was too. It became unimportant until we had some dates to work with which were the local arts and music festival which co-incided with the last weekend of our stay.

I also lost my two teenage boys, I barely saw them unless they were hungry - if they turned up it must mean it's dinner time. They had a great time hanging around the 'common room' and the campers kitchen, gently playing one of the guitars that were hanging on the wall, or taking in the 10 minute walk into the town.

Here's some photos of the campsite, our pitch, and the pitches around us.

 Got a nice pitch, no 6, right in the corner with a tap right beside us.

The kitchen comprised of two 30 litre boxes, one food and one non food. The non food had cutlery, utensils, plates, mugs, torches, clothes pegs and all the other little bitty things you need to go camping. The food consisted of tinned soup, Supernoodles, juice, dried pasta, rice, olive oil etc etc.

View from the tent. Twice a day the local sailing club held lessons on the shore directly in front of our tent. The water is actually part of the Atlantic Ocean, this is an estuary with another headland across the way. To the left is open sea.

As the week went on we got a variety of neighbours, some short stay and some longer.

We got great use out of the firepit, most of the evenings were sat around watching the flames, better than TV any day! 

This is the common room, or sitting room of the main building. This room was used for playing cards, reading, charging phones and laptops, and at the weekends things tended to get quite musical as people enjoyed a good Ceili.

Free wifi too! 

Trip to Mannix Point 2011

So it came around to that time again, the 'big' holiday! We headed off on Monday 18th July to Mannix Point campsite, which is on the Ring of Kerry, in the Republic of Ireland. The reason I chose here is because of some fantastic reviews I found online, which convinced me that there was something special about this area that was worth exploring.

There was quite a bit of preparation for this trip, the work seemed to take most of a week before hand what with cleaning up the house, washing all the bedlinen so that it would be fairly fresh to come home to, laundry and ironing and packing clothes. Then there was the actual packing of the boot, I'd decided to take the big canvas frame tent, Stan (the man) Evans as the space would be useful when going away for longer. The grocery prices in the south of Ireland are expensive and so I was taking all my barbecue fuel, groceries and some cooked meals for the first few days. The problem with all of this of course is getting it into a hatchback, and I have to say this caused quite a bit of head scratching. I know that I'm supposed to leave a space in the car so I can use the rear view mirror, but there was no way I was able to do that in the end. I just had to hope I didn't get pulled over.

I had worked out that the journey would take six and a half hours. In reality it was more like eight and a half hours and I have to say the journey was a hard one, slightly stressful as there are two toll roads and one e-toll road where you have to call in to a garage to pay retrospectively. I was incredibly tired as I had got zero sleep the night before, due to being all excited about going on my holidays!

And then on top of all that when we arrived it was to stormy conditions, and the metal poles of the tent were damaged as we attempted to put up the large tent. We abandoned the efforts to pitch it and just rolled it up roughly to bung it back in the car. I then pitched the smaller pop up tent which is in theory a four man, so at least we were able to get to sleep that night. We had no dinner as we'd arrived quite late, and then any food we had was packed under everything else in the car. We just did without and concentrated on getting some rest as it was so late.

The next morning Mortimer, who owns the campsite, took me, poles and all up to a local garage. The mechanics had a vice and so they quickly unbent the damaged poles and we finally got to start our holiday properly.

Stan finally gets a few repairs.

Stan Evans Standard 6 is a frame tent dating from the early 70's which my parents bought in 1974 for, they think, about £350. It would have been an absolute fortune then. 

It got lots and lots of use, but has languished in the loft of my parents garage for many years. Luckily it was dry and it hadn't been made home to a colony of mice. The last time it had been used the poles where bent due to a sloped pitch and a bad storm, the wind got under the tent and lifted the whole thing.  To be honest I thought the poles were for the bin.

But it's not too bad if a bit wonky and luckily my Dad was able to straighten out the worst of the poles last week. I pitched it in the garden in order to replace a few bits and bobs on it, some of the tent rubbers are degraded with age and I wanted to look it over to see what repairs needed done. I also wanted to get it soaked through, and chose a weekend when the heavens were supposed to open. In the end, despite the forecast, there was not ONE drop of rain. Typical. If I'd known that I would have been away camping in one of my other tents!

I restrung the curtains with new wire and got them hung. I do like them now (I used to hate them) and I think it might be because they're so old they're retro now!

The canvas is very well faded, but as least it's evenly faded all over. The top is still quite brown inside but it's cream from the outside. And the bright, lime green on the inside walls is pale green on the outside, hardly discernible from the cream colour. The curtains are brown, orange and lime green flowers, in these pictures I'm using one set of the curtains as a table cover. The children and I had our Sunday Lunch in the tent, and my Mum and Dad came to visit the tent later on in the afternoon.

The repairs were minor, I replaced some of those rubbers and added some zip pullers. I ordered a hessian bag from ebay to serve as a pole bag, and since I've taken the tent down another four poles have made it to my Dads garage in order to get some more straightening out done. 

I'm trying to figure out how to take this tent to Cork in my hatchback with all my other camping gear. I don't have a tow bar on the car although I could borrow a trailer if I did. I don't want to tow a trailer all the way to Cork anyway. I'll probably end up taking a polyester tent anyway but if it's at all possible to fit this in with half of the back seat down I'll be taking Stan to Cork instead!

When I first test pitched this tent last year and posted pictures online I got a response from the Grandson of Stan Evans himself! To be honest I was amazed at how things like happen in 'virtural land'.

It's not in bad condition for a tent that's nearly 40 years old.

 

The Factory in Warrington

Camping at Benone

I honestly forget how much pleasure it is for me to go solo camping. On this occasion nothing would do but I had to go to the beach. I've had a stressful few months and the need for an ocean breeze to blow it all away was very strong indeed. I toyed with the idea of going to Carrick Dhu in Portrush and also with wild camping in the dunes at White Park Bay (although I don't think I'm brave enough for wild camping yet) but in the end I settled for the non electric pitch at Benone Strand. I chose it because there is direct access to the beach and the walks are very good, not only along the beach itself but there is a network of walks through the sand dunes as well.

Any camping trip is preceded by deciding which tent to bring. A few weeks ago I added another Quechua pop up tent to my collection, a smaller four man one. I wanted to bring it on it's first outing, but knowing that the weather was going to turn bad on me by Sunday I also wanted some stand up space, so I brought the Quechua base seconds too. The site I went to has a policy of charging extra for pup tents so I pitched the two tents butting up to each other because I was going to argue the case for a modular system should I be questioned by the staff, in the end I wasn't.

 I had a really good set up, a bedroom and a living room in effect. The extra benefit was that they were extremely quick to pitch, both tents come in a large flat circle with a strap that holds it all together. Being pop ups all you have to do is release the strap and the whole things going 'boing', exploding out of your grip. Great fun! However there is always a price to pay, and in this case the cost is the difficulty of getting both tents compressed back down again which is always fun with a pop up!


Anyway as I said I got set up very quickly and got to the beach as quickly as I could as the night was wearing on and I was losing light. I got to the beach in time to see the sun setting over Donegal with some spectacular skyscapes and set about taking some photos. This was the best of them.

It's only taken me the better part of a year to figure out how to get decent photos on this blog!

Back at camp I started a small camp fire in the bucket barbecue using a firelog which I broke up into smaller pieces. It was so nice to have a fire that I gave my seat over to my little dog and went straight into hippy mode, sitting crossed legged on the ground beside the fire. It seemed like a good time to open the bottle of wine too and so I sat there getting nicely sloshed and feeling more relaxed than I have in many a long day.

As ever there's always the morning after to deal with and so at 4 am I was out of bed in search of paracetamol and some water - my poor head was banging and I discovered the downside of camping in two tents is that there are four zips to get through before you can get to the camp loo!

The funny thing was in my inebriation the night before I could not find the car keys anywhere! I looked and hunted in every bag and nook and cranny of the tent but once it had got quite dark I was relying on a torch and a camp light which is not a very productive way of finding anything! I resigned myself to looking for them in daylight and it was on the Saturday morning I found the keys in the ignition of the car, sadly slightly turned and so I was now dealing with a flat battery. I wasn't overly concerned because I can call the AA out although I did prefer to get it dealt with locally if I could.

I consoled my hungover self intially by going back to the beach and having a paddle in the sea. I even had a little snooze on a sand dune which really helped with the sore head.

Back on site, my neighbours came to the rescue with the car and I met two lovely people even though I was quite mortified. Mark, who was a Motorhome nearby, had a set of jumpleads, but no access to the battery of his motorhome. So the guy who was caravanning across the way lent me the use of his car. Between them they got me on the road again and it was with much relief that I went in to Articlave for some Noodles from the Chinese Takeaway which I took into Castlerock to eat by the sea front. Actually my dog ate the most of it as I bought too much but funnily enough she didn't object to that!

I met another two very nice families as well. Joyce, Alan and their little girls were camped right next to me and are fairly new to camping, having only bought a tent last year. They were so friendly, keeping their paper for me and stopping for chats, and the children were really sweet too. Then Peter and Amanda with their children were camped two up from me and they were very experienced campers, old hands at knocking up one pot meals and had a very impressive family set up with their Outwell, their firepit and two cars to carry it all!

So I told them all about the Northern Ireland camping forum and handed out some business cards and Mark joined up straight away and has been posting away ever since.

I had such a great time that I would not hesitate to go back to this particular section of the site, and hope to book there for a family meet with all three of our families, mine, my sisters and my parents, very soon. However I still like those solo camping trips and in a way I probably need them to cope with the ongoing stress which shows no sign of easing at the moment!

I'll leave this with a couple of pictures of the site.

Trip Report - Claddagh Glen

It was with much anticipation that we went camping to Claddagh Glen, it was good to get going again but I was a little nervous after our previous bad experience at Castlewellan Forest Park.

Kat, a forum member and a friend of the family, had very generously invited us along to her scout camp so that my boys could be introduced to the whole camping experience again in a more positive way. My boys failed to really join in though, it wasn't until the next day and at Kats own house that they started chattering, like a pair of wee birds who finally found their voice.

When we arrived we found quite a narrow glen, with a river running down one side and a flat bit on the other, what used to be called a holme, or a Strath as it's known on this island. There was a band of mature trees on the river bank separating the river from the flat camping field, with spaces and gaps amongst the trees well run over by generations of scouts. That means there is little undergrowth just tracks of bare earth. In the largest clearing there is a communal firepit, a ring of stones with a couple of felled trees for seats. Everything you could possibly want really!

The flat area was long and narrow, with fairly long grass - and behind that was a steep bank covered in strong smelling wild garlic known as Cramph and mature trees, fallen over trees and lots of bluebells. A really wild wood - great for the scouts who were like little rabbits running all over the place! One girl lost her footing right at the top of the slope. She laughed all the way down but had she come into contact with a tree she would likely have broken a few bones! As it was she hit a mud patch at the bottom and escaped with a few impressive scrapes along her arms and legs.

Anyway the arrangement was that Kat's scout group had booked the use of Claddagh Glen, but there was a double booking with another scouting group from Belfast. That group weren't all that pleased about the double booking and chose to deny some of our party the use of the toilet facilities, but in reality we all used them anyway, and just put up with the snotty looks from their scout leaders. The following day they had to backtrack somewhat, they had been concerned that 'our' scout group would be very noisy and not let them sleep but then admitted that their fears were unfounded.

Shortly after I arrived, a guy came along and pitched a tent I thought I'd never see in my lifetime. It's a Tentipi Safari 9, a tepee tent made of good quality cotton canvas and with a price tag of nearly £1400. It is a really nice tent, it oozes quality and I love the pully system which adjusts the 'witches' hat at the top for ventilation.

There is a walk along the river, which goes up and up through a crevice in the earth. At one point a walker will pass a set of cascades that join the river below. As you go further uphill the river gets deeper and the rocks in it get bigger. At a certain point the river turns through 90 degrees and disappears into a cave. This is the Marble Arch system, a Geopark area which boasts an underground set of caves with many wonders all beautifully backlit with coloured lights. I'm sure it's about four or five years since I did 'the tour'. I remember it being quite expensive though!

Anyway I'll conclude by saying we all had a lovely evening, the children melting cooked marshmallows between two chocolate digestive biscuits, the adults enjoying the quiet chat around the light of the campfire. It was very cold during the night, but I did not wake enough to get an extra blanket for myself. By morning I was the first up and my quiet tea making probably woke the next person who in turn woke the next person and by 7.30 pretty much everyone was up. The youngsters went a walking and I even found a geocache, packed up by two and away to see Kat's tent collection in nearby Lisnaskea.

Can't wait for the next time!