Larmer Tree Festival is full of surprises to stumble upon on first day

Larmer Tree Festival, amazingly, is in its 19th year. I say 'amazingly' because although I'd heard of it, I hadn't heard much about it. 4,000ish capacity and held in the beautiful Larmer Tree Gardens set on the Wiltshire Dorset border, it looks spectacular as we arrive in the Friday morning drizzle.

Although we turn up at what may be a peak time, we incur no delays or problems in getting in, collecting tickets or parking and there's even a tractor and trailer ferrying people and their gear from the car park to the camp site if you're fully laden. Walking through the camping grounds, our initial impressions are that there are loads of water points, rubbish collection points, and the volume of toilets per head seems pretty high.

Once the tent is up and arranged, we begin the exploration. After a slow and muddy wander around the main arena, we stop for some tea in an area mostly dedicated to food and end up becoming part of a festival drawing by an eccentric husband and wife pair of walkabout performance artists. The area is great – the non proprietary picnic tables mean that everyone can sit around and chat easily. We amble through to the lush (and still very green), main stage with has a very close neighbour called The Garden Stage which proves to work extremely well throughout the weekend; it's possible to have an almost constant stream of music by staying in one spot and rotating 45 degrees.

Settling down straight away, we dig into Moon Music Orchestra who don't quite stop the drizzle but still manage to put smiles on our faces with their psychedelic folky sounds. We sample some of the cloudy cider but we're disappointed to hear that International have been held up en route to the festival so we're at a loose end for a while.

A bit more of a wander around the beautiful gardens and our children (aged 3 and 8) enjoy running around in the magic of the 'Lost Wood', get their faces painted (at a very reasonable price), and borrow bedtime story books from the Little Library. There are some amazing pieces of site art; some concealed (hundreds of pencils stacked carefully in tree branches), and some more blatant – the outside living room with sofas and tables created from turf and plants. We gasp in amazement constantly as we stumble on more and more surprises.

Back on the main stage, Babyhead come on earlier than programmed to fill the gap left by Pama International and although most of us have undergone a thorough drenching, there's something about the dub vibe and the sun coming out which really seems to lift the growing crowd. What is it about reggae that pulls the clouds out of the way of the sun? A lot of their set is dedicated to new tracks from the forthcoming album but 'Recording Device' really gets us all hopping about.

More cider and Pama International appear on the Garden Stage. After apologies for missing their slot (which are really not necessary, we're just pleased they did finally make it), they burst through a blistering set. My wife takes our children into the woods for story-time while I'm left to marvel at The Specials' Lynval Golding's energy levels and the tightness of the band.

As the sun goes down, we explore the delights of The Lost Wood and the ultraviolet lights illuminating giant woollen spiders' webs, mushrooms, and figures in the bushes and trees.

The children are too tired to appreciate the Blues Brothers-esque grooves of Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybees, so we head to the magically lit Café Dish near the main stage to have some hot chocolate while we listen in relatively tranquil surroundings, and then we head back to the tent. The sound on the main stage is so loud that we can still hear it all pretty clearly as we relax into chairs with a beer outside the tent.

Latest Updates