Matlock

Tickets bought months in advance we were really looking forward to an amazing weekend of music and culture at the Y Not festival near Matlock in Derbyshire. We had arranged to go with our friends James and Natalie Pearson, who live in Monmouthshire and have a campervan of their own. We had agreed to meet up at a pub near the festival, but the traffic from Wales, coupled with a later than anticipated departure meant James and Natalie were a couple of hours late and we ended up getting on to the site as the act they wanted to see on Thursday evening finished.

We parked up next to one another, pitched a small tent that they had bought along between the vans and put up two wind brakes and our flag pole, which immediately blew over! Despite that we decided to walk down and take a look around and it was immediately obvious that the heavy rain over the last few days had taken its toll on the footpaths and the ground was boggy, making it tough to get around.

We went back to the vans after slogging our way around the site and compared food and drink shopping, between the two families we had enough wine, cheese and other snacky things to last a month! Without further ado we open a three bottle box of wine and pulled out an assortment of cheeses and biscuits, we listened to music and chatted till about 2am, when it began to rain again. It rained constantly all night and we took a team decision to go down to the festival site in the afternoon. By then the footpaths were more like mudslides, the tent camping areas looked like something out of a World Was One movie, everyone was up to their ankles in sludge and walking anywhere was a struggle....and still it kept raining.Read more