Fancy festivals making partying comfortable not chaotic
You’ve been keeping up the party spirit even though you’ve been bogged down by mud. After a long day, you can’t face the thought of returning to a busy campsite to see whether your tent has been blown over by the wind or not. You just want the feeling of being at home while in a field, in the middle of nowhere. Is that really so much to ask?
Luckily, music festivals have given themselves glow ups over the last few years, making it possible to have a weekend-long experience with music and friends without needing to rough it – or worry about slumming it in a sleeping bag.
If you’re thinking about a festival this year, the best news is that partying in a field is back and bigger than ever for 2022, as the industry recovers following the pandemic. Here are some of the best options for campers keen on comfort over chaos.
Gorgeous gorgeous sun at Hideout on Pag island, Croatia
Hideout has all the best bits of a British festival, but with guaranteed heat. On the picturesque Pag Island, the dance music festival attracts some of the world’s most famous DJs to play in incredibly euphoric, amphitheatre-like open-air clubs on the island’s Zrce Beach.
There are day parties and boat parties by day, where famous DJs like Skream play more intimate sets while out in the middle of the piercing blue ocean, and Airbnbs and villas nearby are relatively affordable.
Luxury hideout packages are a snip at £1,400, and include VIP tickets with special access points to get better views, as well as access to bars with shorter queues. The price per person includes seven nights accommodation in a luxury spa hotel or in a glamping pod on site, with air conditioning. Return flights and airport transfers are also included.
Make sure to arrive in time for the Beach Party on Sunday 3 July, which acts as a welcome to the festival, with DJs including Mike Skinner, Paul Woolford, Alan Fitzpatrick, Darius Syrossian, DJ Seinfeld, Maya Jane Coles, and Camelphat.
If you’ve partied in Ibiza, this is like that, but with an endless rotation of DJs for 16 hours per day and all on one beach, accessible with one ticket. Enquire at [email protected] or online.
Endless fine dining at Lost Village in Lincolnshire
Set serenely around a lake in Lincolnshire, this electronic music festival has a surprisingly bougie side. Alongside the dancing there’s Michelin-starred dining, with chefs laying on specially curated feasts with lake views on medieval style banquet tables adorned with multi-course meals and festooned with gorgeous floral displays.
How on earth all this is possible in a field is anyone’s guess – but Lost Village invites diners to not only eat and drink, but party, in comfort akin with a posh London hotel. The boutique sanctuary offers hotel-level accommodation in a field, in a private area of the festival with hot showers, a hair and make-up retreat, porter service and private cocktail bar.
Tickets are sold out but you can sign up for the resale and find out more about the glamping options by visiting the website.
Raving and behaving at Standon Calling
This boutique festival in the rolling Hertfordshire countryside achieves a balance many other festivals struggle to achieve. It has family activities like dog shows and a heated swimming pool by day, along with performances from current pop artists and throwback names while also going hard by night with DJ sets until practically sunrise.
They go big on the luxury element too, with boutique camping closest to the main stages and many of the bell tents offering proper beds, towels, lighting, mirrors, storage units and plugs to charge your phones. There are better toilets and hot showers so you can look your best the next day, too.
If you fancy splurging hugely, drop £925 per person on the Yurt Suite, with a private shower, cotton bedding, a memory foam mattress and a living area to chill out in between the action. All options can be found on the festival’s website.
Serious music lovers should head to We Out Here
In its third year, We Out Here is the most spectacular new festival in quite some years. Run by DJ aficionado Gilles Peterson of Worldwide FM, the music scheduling is some of the most genuinely diverse in the UK, aside from perhaps Glastonbury.
Expect tribal beats to clash with electronic jazz and gospel, but as the sun goes down over the festival site’s handsome lake, the mixing desks give way to electronica, which gently fills the night air.
It’s a more grown up crowd too, so if you remember the 1990s but still like dancing until the wee hours, you’ll feel better represented here. A range of fancy accommodation options are in line with the crowd. Luxury Bedouin tents have gorgeous hanging decorations to wake up to, and soft furnishings to hang out on in private, airstream caravans provide an actual four walls and Royal Indian Shikar tents offer the privelege of space, with ornate rugs and seating areas for unwinding.
Book and read about more options on the We Out Here website.
There are, supposedly, still ways to get into Glastonbury
Yes, Glastonbury’s very, very sold out. The heady days of 2009, when Jay Z headlined and tickets didn’t sell out, feel a long, long time ago. Nigh on impossible to get tickets for these days, there is supposedly another way to blag into the world’s best festival. (And it truly lives up to that name.)
A selection of high-end hospitality services claim to be able to get punters into the festival at the last minute, despite the festival having sold out. The Sincura Group, for instance, say they can get punters in for a poultry £7,500 for a VIP glamping experience. The Hospitality Broker claims to offer access to a VIP campsite with extra space but don’t list a cost, and Cornucopia-Events claim to be able to provide a four-berth Winnebago campervan with VIP festival access, a snap at just £29,500.
We haven’t tried to use any of these services, and do not recommend any of them specifically, so do your research before looking into a VIP experience with Glastonbury.
Our top tip is, remember also, as our picture points out, Glastonbury isn’t just about music: it is the Glastonbury festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, so expect hundreds of theatre and circus performances too, which take place over a whole range of fields on site. Watch out especially for roaming street theatre performers, like these wonderful people above, who were wandering around stark naked in 2017. New theatre shows premiere at the festival every year too, on both indoor and outdoor theatre stages.
More than headline-chasing, the best way to do the best festival in the world is to throw away the programme and get completely and utterly lost.