Festival on the Farm, Gressenhall, Norfolk

Saturday 10th August, Festival on the Farm, Gressenhall, Norfolk
Today we had the pleasure of running fairy crown making workshops at a lovely family festival at Gressenhall Museum, the Festival on the Farm. We all arrived before 8 am to set up and decorate the Fairyland Trust area and medieval workshop tent, we were located in a lovely grassy area next to the orchards, alongside drumming workshops, knitting workshops, storytellers and much much more. Come 10 am the queues were mounting outside the festival entrance and we were costumed, decorated and ready to spread some nature magic. Our set up was much helped by the fine weather.
We ran four crown making workshops throughout the day, after the first one we were consistently booked up, with waiting lists. We were pleased to see a few familiar faces from the Fairy Fair and Real Halloween who had come and found us as they loved the workshops they had attended before. We also met lots of new friends, many of whom were keen to come and see the magic of the Real Halloween and Fairy Fair.

See Abbie preparing Hawthorn sprigs, said to be the Fairy Queens favourite, ready for the hordes of young crown makers to adorn their crowns

Hello FairyLand Trust followers!

Here is an update on the Camp Bestival weekend, Fridays blog post is by fairy Clare, and Danny the elf has written a retrospective post of his whole experience at CB!


Friday 2nd August

We were woken to the hypnotic sound of rain on canvas this morning, once again the world outside shrouded in mist. As on our first day here, the veil teasingly lifted, gradually revealing our beautiful surroundings and THE SUN.

It has been a wonderful day for the Fairyland Trust. All our Fairy Crown workshops were fully booked, the dapper Danny and Pete recruited some lovely supporters and the magical Dingly Dell now proudly hosts some amazingly imaginative and intricate Fairy Houses. Some beetles had already moved into one.

Kelly preparing string for general tying and fixing, or for washing lines. Even fairies have laundry!

Clare foraging for building materials.

 

Some of the lovely Fairy Houses

 



Spiderman modelling a lovely Fairy Crown

2 of our crew studying ‘The Natural History of the Unicorn’.

 

Paige briefing Luke in the art of Crown Making

It is a good feeling to know we have spread a little nature magic today. Seeing children and adults foraging amongst the twigs and earth looking for suitable materials to make fairy beds, doorways, crockery or chimney pots is a very lovely thing. As is watching 25 children listen in silent rapture to our Crown Maker show them how to make a harebell out of tissue paper.

This Fairyland Blogger will leave you with the image of a contented crew member strolling back to the camp at about 11pm, having seen Billy Bragg earlier on the Castle Stage (a glorious reminder of festivals gone by), and two children walking past with worn out parents, chanting "No sleep for us! No sleep for us!".

This really is a festival for the small people!

My experience of Camp Bestival 2013....   Danny

Wednesday

The Berlingo limped into the grounds of Lulworth Castle having come to the boil around 20 miles short of the site. After registration we located the rest of the crew and pitched the tent before having a bite to eat and a few drinks.

Thursday

After a brief gathering of the crew in the morning those without children headed onto the main site to put the finishing touches to the Workshop and check out Dingly Dell, The Fairy Houses  location.

A big thumbs-up to the rest of the crew who had obviously been hard at work on Wednesday whilst I was nervously poking the radiator cap on the Berlingo, wishing I knew about cars.

Kendra and myself took a wander through a military firing range with the children in a bid to locate a beach. We saw a pair of Buzzards and Freddie managed to find some ammunition rounds which I persuaded him to place (gently) back where he found them. The beach looked lovely but was sadly out of bounds due to unexploded shells and non-specific military stuff. The view was breathtaking however.

In the evening we all went onto the site and gathered foliage and treasures for Fridays activities.

Friday

I headed down onto site with two very excited children at 10am in the morning. With a bag full of snacks and sun-cream we roamed the festival. Freddie met up with his friend and they done a Comic book animation workshop whilst Rosie got her face painted.

After the kids had a go on the carousel it was time to report for my first shift as Booking-in fairy for the Fairy Crowns Workshop. My initial nerves soon tailed away. People seem genuinely interested in what the Fairyland Trust are doing and the children are enchanted by the workshops.

In the evening the family went down and watched Billy Bragg. I took a makeshift Trolley to transport Rosie and we went for drinks with friends at the furthest end of the Festival site before the long trek back to the crew site.

 Saturday

Saturday morning saw me heading back to drop Freddie at another animation workshop. Rosie got another face painting session in and we watched Mr Tumble doing some old school nose- parping and custard pie antics.

  I reported for my shift on Fairy Houses. Again this was my first experience of doing this. The wooded area was directly next to the main stage but seemed to have a calming effect on the crowds that entered. It was lovely to see families taking time out from the madness of a festival to build the houses together. It was great to see the imagination and energy of the children being reciprocated by the parents, especially the ones that had looked at me like I was a bit mad when I explained what we were up to.

We saw the Levellers on Saturday night. I watched them on the forecourt of the Castle. I’ve been meaning to see the Levellers since I was a teenager so this was great.

 

Sunday

The crew got together early to wish Ben a Happy 18^th Birthday and we all had slice of fantastic birthday cake which had been commissioned from the crew caterers.

 I clocked on for the early shift as a Booking-in Fairy for “Fairy Books”. It struck me that over the three days I began to recognise some of the children/parents hanging around the workshops and Fairy Houses area. We definitely had built a fan-base by this point. Again the shift was great fun and I only heard positive things about peoples experience with the Fairyland Trust.

 I also managed to listen to Dick and Dom doing a “Bogies” routine and the Wurzels whilst manning my post- both of which were a little surreal. I spent the afternoon watching some medieval  jousting action which led to the kids having a sword fight in front of the castle.

In the evening we saw a little bit of Alan Davies before meeting with some of the crew and watching the fireworks/projections from a cheeky “staff-only” location to the side of the main stage.

Monday

We were all packed-up early and making our way off-site by around 10:30am.

A massive thanks to the other crew members who put in a sterling effort with the set-up/pack down and to Clare who organised us in a serenely calm manner.

Thanks to everyone for reading!

This is another blog, written on Thursday and posted today by FairyLand helper Ben Reynolds.

After a reasonably good night sleep by the fairy crew we all woke ready to create a magical workshop space. In no time at all we had the medieval tent ready once again for Fairy Crowns, Magic Wands and Fairy Books, with enough room for the booking booth to accommodate all of our lovely seed wands.

Ready for action!

 

With everything set up and ready for tomorrow, some of us took a walk to try and find the beach! This proved harder than we originally thought; if you were thinking that a big, wet expanse of blue would be easy to find you would be wrong! At least, it’s not easy for us northern folk anyway, we climbed steep hills and cliff sides in the mid-day heat of Lulworth to try and get to the sea. At the very top we could see for miles around including a great view of Camp Bestival and the central point itself; Lulworth Castle. Whilst others turned back, others carried on, till eventually we could see the surf. However in our way was the steepest path that any of us had ever seen! So resting a while on the edge we agreed that getting back up this path in time for the morning workshop may prove difficult! So turning our backs on the beach we headed away back to Camp! On our walk we happened to come across some familiar flowers from some of the workshops, including Harebells, Yarrow and Field Scabious

The not so small hill we thought would be easy to climb.

Camp Bestival doesn't look too big from up here!

Fairy Abbie and I running on the hillside.

So close to the beach, but still so far!

Harebells, to let the fairies know there's a party.

 

At dusk, while it was nice and cool, some of us went off into the woods to collect foliage. It’s amazing what a little greenery can do to a tent! As the site has begun to darken once again and the littler members of the fairy crew are tucked away fast asleep, we have all begun to drift back to our crew camp. Even though we didn’t quite make it to the beach, the local countryside was more than enough as compromise and I think we will all sleep well tonight, ready for the first bit of FairyLand magic to begin at Camp Bestival tomorrow.

Well worth the climb!

 

Another wonderful retrospective blog due to Wi-Fi difficulties here at Camp Bestival, apologies for the delay!

So after a good rest and a nice shower, the time soon came for the fairy team to be on the road again. Camp Bestival here we come!

It has been a long day driving to arrive at Lulworth, but it really was worth it! Camp Bestival is in such a beautiful area full of wildlife and nature, perfect for the fairy team and our workshops.

When we arrived, Pete and Rachael had already put up the medieval tent! So when the crew reunited we put up the ‘awkward ’cook tent for Fairy Houses, however I got distracted by the beautiful Peacock that was obviously eager to make himself a fairy house.

 

Our eager visitor

                                                  

 

The fairy houses tent all ready for building!

The children have some competition!

 

Once we decorated the Fairy Houses area with bunting, we put some foliage up around the metal fence that lined the road next to the medieval. Some of the staff around the area had lots of spare Oak and kindly offered it to us, now we have lots of Oak for Crowns and Wands!

As the temperature dropped we decided to leave it until tomorrow to finish off the workshop and make the area look like it’s been touched by fairies, if only we had some fairy dust to help us!

Smart idea of the day! Pete made a bath for the withies so they don’t dry up!

Withie bath!

Lulworth castle, the beautiful setting for Camp B!