The Big Feastival

This bank holiday weekend I headed up to the Cotswolds to visit my lovely best friend Sofia and her boyfriend and on Saturday we all headed down to Alex James farm for The Big Feastival, which my friend Shalina helps organise. Over the last few years it's become a bit of an annual tradition for me to head to The Big Festival with friends and this year we were incredibly lucky to have beautiful weather with the sun shining, no rain in sight and it just being lovely and warm for most of the day. 

As we arrived around lunchtime, we were already pretty hungry so we were in the ideal location, the only problem was deciding what to eat. We treated ourselves to Lobster and chips, which was exactly what we needed and for me it signalled a day of delicious food and fun!

These vegan maki rolls were so good. This one was BBQ 'duck' and we would never have guessed they were vegan. My friends reliably informed me the taste and texture was just like BBQ duck as I'd never had the real thing.

The cheese toastie from Hobbs House Bakery was the best I've had. Made on sourdough bread with cheddar and leeks it just delicious and the sourdough bread was just perfection.

Festival favourites: my Topshop yellow raincoat and my Olympus Pen

Expresso Martini and a sit down in the Lavazza Coffee hut

Getting to see Grandmaster Flash, Ella Eyre and Dizzie Rascal at Feastival was such a highlight. We had a lot of fun dancing away to Grandmaster Flash's set, so many favourite old skool tunes and Ella Eyre was so good. She'd released her album: Feline on Friday so Festival was her first album release gig and it was incredible to see her live, as I love so many of her tunes. I've already downloaded her album on Spotify. I have to admit I was also happy to have the chance to get my floral wellies and yellow Topshop rain mac out. Can't be anything but cheery when wearing my festival outfit.

Another highlight were the cookery demos. We were lucky enough to get see Deliciously Ella and Olivia Wollenburg  cook up raw chocolate orange brownies. The Deliciously Ella cookbook is one of favourite cookbooks at the moment so it was lovely to see the healthy eating ethos behind the book live in action.

We also got to see Ashley Palmer-Watts, head chef at Dinner By Heston Blumenthal at the Mandarin Oriental, Hyde Park. The cookery demo was entertaining with a fire on stage to smoke the snails for the dish and it was interesting to hear Ashely's tales of working at The Fat Duke.

I discovered Wool and the Gang a few years ago in New York and recently went to one of their knitting parties in London, so I was very excited to see Wool and the Gang at Big Festival, selling knitted goods and the knitting sets as well as having a knitting workshop in the Cheese Hub.

I really want one of these for the garden!

Food and Bhangra beats

Beautiful Sunset over Feastival

With the evening came lots of Funfair fun! I have to admit, I'm a bit of a scaredy cat when it comes to rides, but I did brave the Ferris Wheel, apparently the oldest one in the UK (this didn't really reassure me I have to say). There were a few 'interesting' moments though, such as when we stopped with me at the top to let people on and my seat started rocking.....eek....but on the plus side I had an incredible ariel view of Dizzie Rascal live on stage which was an pretty amazing way to end the day at Big Feastival.

Definitely one of the best Big Feastival experiences so far!

Jx