A weekend at Latitude 2023

A couple of firsts for our family in 2023 – we booked to go to Latitude for the weekend in July and we were going on our first break as a family of four (well 5, as Nana joined us).

When booking a weekend ticket, camping is included in the price from Thursday-Monday.. If booking with children you can opt to camp in the family camp site which is where we pitched up on a rainy Thursday in July.

Having only ever visited festivals for the day, we weren’t really sure what we were letting ourselves (and more importantly) our children in for. Will there be much for them to do? Are we mad to go camping with a baby? Will we survive?

Yes, yes and also yes. But in all honesty, it was a much nicer experience than I had expected and to be honest camping with a 5 month old baby was probably easier than camping with an older child seeing as they are happy to just be snuggled up to mum.

Getting there and pitching up

Latitude is set in Henham Park, Suffolk on the last weekend of July. The journey there according to Google is approximately 2 hours from home but then once you hit the diversion, it adds on another hour of travel time.

We got there later than anticipated on the Thursday evening. As we had arrived late it meant we were parked far back from the entrance to the family campsite and then once we made the trek into the campsite, we had another trek to find space to pitch our tent.

It was raining, almost dark, I was carrying a 5 month old baby and trying to keep our eldest motivated on a very boring trek while Mr FF hauled the wagon carrying two tents and maybe half the load from our car so we were fairly miserable by the time we found somewhere to pitch and didn’t fully appreciate that our spot was actually quite nicely located not too far from the Enchanted Garden and a short walk from the toilet and showering facilities.

Note: if arriving late and/or in rain then enquire at the entrance to the family camp site the cost for a golf buggy to drive you to a nice spot. We didn’t as we vastly underestimated how far the walk would be (not to mention the fact someone was going to have to walk back to the car to fetch the next load and then walk there and then back again another time to drop off the wagon back to the car park) but I wish we had, it would have saved us about an hour per trip and would have meant we could have pitched in daylight (and seen we were on top of brambles and earwigs).

Family Campsite

We were pleasantly surprised by how clean the facilities like the toilets and bathrooms were. They were nearly always clean and always had toilet roll – two of the biggest worries I had. Staff were on hand all day going in and out of the bathroom stalls to clean them and they done a great job. We didn’t try out the showers as there was always a massive queue when we walked by there so I’m not sure what the situation was with them.

As mentioned above, it is a long old trek from the car park to the family campsite but on the Thursday and Monday there are wagons available to hire for carting your equipment to and from the car (for an hourly rate). If taking any buggies/wagons then make sure they are designed for off-road use as it was a very uneven and in places muddy. I took the baby carrier for our 5 month old (there was no room for the pushchair in the car) and found that to be ideal but people with older kids were mostly using wagons (these can be hired for the weekend but need to be booked in advance) or bike trailers/running buggies. These looked ideal for older kids who used them to nap/play on their tablets during the late shows.

The Festival

Our main motivation for booking the festival was to see Pulp who were headlining on the Friday. Day tickets had already sold out whole we umm’d and ahh’d about whether we could/should take our 5 month old baby to a festival before deciding that we absolutely should and camping at a festival for the weekend with a 5 month old in tow would be absolutely the best idea.

Bands/Music acts

The main headline acts were Pulp (Mrs and Mr FF’s favourite), Paolo Nuttini (Nana FF’s favourite) and George Ezra (Little FF’s favourite) but throughout the three days of the festival there were lots of other acts which we were able to take in too and which our daughter enjoyed even though some of them she probably would never have heard before (The Kooks, The Lightening Seeds).

Child-friendly activities

Throughout the day there are many child-friendly activities going on in the Enchanted Garden which is helpfully located in the Family Campsite (Family Camping wristbands are necessary to access the Family campsite). A few of my daughters favourite activities to do were the Aardman model building workshop (you need to book on to this as it sells out quickly), rocket building and firing and circus skills. Also on offer were story telling sessions, face painting, hair braiding, clown shows, bubbles, archery and I suspect more that I have forgotten.

Inside the actual festival there were also a few family-friendly activities like arts and crafts, pond dipping, shows, story telling, bush crafts, and even a small soft play area for toddlers.

Of course, nothing specifically geared towards babies but he was just happy to experience all of the different sights, sounds and smells.

Comedy Acts

The comedy acts were definitely not family friendly and I think our daughter learned a whole new vocabulary from the acts we saw, she wasn’t particularly interested in watching any of the comedy acts, so we only took her to a few of the ones we were particularly excited about (Romesh Ranganathan and Russel Kane

Food

No BBQ’s were allowed on site so that pretty much ruled out catering for ourselves (not to mention we wouldn’t have been able to store any fresh produce) so we mostly relied on the food inside the festival and store-cupboard foods that we could either add hot water to (instant porridge, pot noodles), heat up on the camping stove (hot dogs and beans) or eat cold (tuna and salad wraps).

There was a lot of variety in the festival – pizzas, hot dogs and burgers, fried chicken, various curries, noodles, kebabs, gyros, falafel and houmous wraps. We always managed to find something to suit each of us but it was fairly costly costing between £10-£15 per meal.