When the Road Runs Out

September 10-12 saw us attend our first UK music festival, End of the Road at the Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset. EOTR is about as far removed, though, from the big summer festivals like Glastonbury and Reading as could be imagined, which was basically what we wanted as we sought the closest experience to our festival of choice in New Zealand, Camp(us) A Low Hum. I must say, this compared very, very favourably to CALH.


The first thing on the agenda was of course to set up our tent. We had bought it a few weeks previously but had not had a chance to have a test run at pitching it yet, and it wasn't until we had almost finished that we really how tiny the thing was. We managed to fit in it though. Just.

Please ignore the flag behind my head.

Some people were clever and hired these darling wagons for their accommodation; possibly something to look into if we go again next year.

"Purveyors of Fairydust"

Here is the central field of the grounds that held most of the food stalls, shops, pubs, activity tents and three of the smaller stages. Hopefully this gives you an idea of the laid-back vibe of the festival.


We enjoyed many fine local ales from the three on-site pubs: The Badger Inn, The Peacock Bar, and The Black Crow. My favourite drop was the Hedge Monkey - a malty, hoppy deep amber ale brewed in Somerton, Dorset.


For non-alcoholic beverages the Tea Stop, operating out of an old double-decker bus with a garden out the front, proved to be an excellent option. Here I am enjoying a milkshake and the view from the upper deck.



This is the main stage from afar. It was a lovely setting with lots of greenery and that cute archway off to the side. This picture was about away as far as you could get from the stage, and it was very easy to get up close for a great view of the performers.


Wandering amongst the mazey paths of Larmer led to many unexpected delights, including the macaws and peacocks that inhabited the site. Unicorns and zebras hid in the trees...


...while this delightful scene popped up in a clearing. It later hosted a lovely ensemble who played Joanna Newsom covers.


We probably spent too much time in the games area playing giant Connect 4. Here is an epic draw that we played out.


Oh yeah, a whole bunch of great bands played as well. As it happens we barely took a single photo of any of them, which probably says something about (a) how engaging the performances were, and (b) how much other fun stuff was going on around the place. If I were to pick two highlights from each day it would be Modest Mouse and Wolf Parade for day one, Iron & Wine and Caribou for day two, Errors and Wilco for day three.

There is a pretty high chance that we will go back next year, and early-bird tickets are already on sale... very tempting! For now we have our sweet t-shirts to remind us of the great time we had. His and hers, respectively:

¡hola España

I'll let Oren write about the End of the Road festival and I'll discuss Spain.

For the first time since arriving in the UK, Oren and I left these fair shores for a European adventure. I was easily seduced by the idea of Spain at the Spanish festival in Oxford Street. Oren had introduced me to paella at some stage, so Valencia made sense.
I can happily report that there were no transportation hiccups this time around. Begrudgingly we were up to catch a bus a little after 3am to the middle of nowhere aka Stansted Airport. Any claim that is even remotely near London is a lie. You always think the flights are cheap but then you have to factor both the time and cost to travel to god knows where.

However the good thing about early morning flights was that we arrived in Spain just after 11am and caught the metro into the city. Valencia airport is probably one of the few airports that Ryanair flies into that is actually near the place it claims to be so it was only a 20 minute Metro ride into the city. I instantly loved Valencia. It reminded me of a sunnier, friendlier Paris without any worry that you will be hassled by people trying to sell you Eiffel towers or tie "friendship" bracelets around your wrists.

We ended up wandering around the marble streets in the rising heat just having a look with no real idea of where we were going. We found this Cathedral:


I had found out that Valencia had a large aquarium that housed Belugas and desperately wanted to go so, full of paella from a local cafe, we walked down to the City of Science and Arts which is basically an architectural wet dream. Myself, I found it slightly tacky. However the walk through the gardens in a now dry riverbed was lovely.


By this time it was unbelievably hot. Having come from a rainy wet London to a very dry sunny Valencia at nearly 30 degrees, we were both melting. I though the aquarium was indoors but a lot of it was outside as you walked between the mostly underground enclosures.



The belugas were amazing but also a bit sad. One spent several hours floating at a gate wishing to get through and the other was doing a constant repetitive pacing through its tank. At one point the one at the gate started making the most screeching whale sound that echoed through the underground viewing area. It's sad that these majestic creatures have to be in aquariums so people can understand why we need to conserve our environments.

Our hotel was only about 10 minutes walk across a large bridge after the aquarium where we could delight in the air conditioning. I'm becoming a pro at booking hotels and we had a lovely place I had scored a 45% off. It was very fancy.
Our hotel was also in a good location, between the beach and the city and right beside two shopping centres. We ended up getting some bread, chorizo, duck pate, juice, beer and crisps and settling in for most of the night before wandering the other shopping centre and watching a man fail at selling corn outside our hotel window.

We woke up late due to a well deserved sleep in and were welcomed for a cooler day. It was mid 20s for most of the day. We decided to walk down to the beach via the America's Cup village. I guess the unfortunate thing is that because it's been in court so long, the village is dead but we took photos of the NZ building.
We walked right around to the beach and found ourselves a nice spot to rest. I decided to have a swim which was very refreshing in the heat. I liked that no one on the beach had any qualms about their bodies, no one was perfect, it was hot, they worn what they wanted. It didn't feel like a fashion or beauty competition like I had expected.
We both had been working hard so were happy to have a quiet day. We eventually made back to the shopping centre by our hotel and went to a Spanish place that sells montaditos which are a sort of tapas. It took us our first order to realise they were just baby rolls and were served with crisps! I really liked it, it was a lot of fun and with every order we got giant glasses of Spanish beer for only a euro! This of course lead to us napping in our hotel room later before going to another tapas restaurant for dinner that served lots and lots of meat. Oren did very well in proving that money spent on Spanish language papers at Canterbury Uni wasn't entirely wasted. I was very proud of him as I spoke no Spanish at all!



Unfortunately the next day we had a 11am flight back to Stansted. We took the metro and said goodbye to the heat and the sun to return to rainy London.


Next weekend we head to Dublin for which will probably be the last trip for a couple months as Oren can't have leave over the Christmas period from work.