Cambridge Folk Festival in the eyes of a 14-Year-Old
By Alice Ralph

It's quite hard to deny that the word 'festival' sounds appealing to most teenagers. But it's a different story when you're going with your parents. Not that I was complaining, any festival is worth it, with or with out your mum and dad. But things seemed cursed from the beginning, in my eyes at least, although it wasn't to last. It took off on a low note, with me being forced to rise at 4am. I didn't even know 4am existed, but I made the most of it, and took great delight in annoying the entire household by dragging them from their beds too.

Living in Poole, we had a very long drive ahead of us to Cambridge, and we wanted to get there as early as possible to pitch the tents. The journey was enlightened only by a pit stop at a Tesco's restaurant, where my friend Beth and I succeeded in getting lost amongst aisles of cleaning products and dog food whilst searching for our parents.

We got to Coldhams Common in the midst of a torrential rainstorm, but we weren't about to let that stop us from pitching our tents. As if getting soaked through isn't enough, we were invaded by an army of frogs, no less. And above all, our tents were literally growing mould, after being shoved away in a damp attic for months. I was already really looking forward to the camping side of things…

On the upside, however, I made a miraculous life-changing discovery. Still suffering from the after effects of the Glastonbury Festival toilets, I was expecting a large ditch in the ground, with some rusty metal boxes bolted on top, but instead was suitably amazed by flushing toilets, with seats, paper, locks on the doors and even sinks. And if this wasn't enough to keep me satisfied, I later stumbled upon edible food, showers, a nearby swimming pool and Sainsbury's at hand for when we ran out of Pringles. It was more a 5-Star Hotel than camping.

Another thing I thought was ingenious was the buses, chauffeuring big loads of us to and from the campsite. We didn't have to pay for them, and despite an interesting incident with the wrong bus and a confused driver, it made the entire weekend much less exhausting. I even slept well, although on the first night it took me a while to realise that when you try to sleep on a slope where your feet are higher up than your head it makes it difficult.