“Rich People Doing Themselves”

This could be the official tagline of Wilderness Festival, set in Cornbury Park in the heart of Oxfordshire. The UK elite get a bad press these days – being rich comes with its perks, but public opinion is not one of them.

Here, at Wilderness, they like to do things differently. It’s a playground for rich people to metaphorically let down their hair and party like they’re on a superyacht in Monte Carlo harbour. Except they’re near Oxford. In a field. Or a deer park, if you want to get pedantic.

You can’t help wonder whether the organisers were having Satirical Saturday when they came up with their festival name. Wilderness conjures up images of wind swept mountains, hauling in your water supplies, mules, and not a person for miles. Wilderness festival, on the other hand, is as tame as it gets. It’s akin to having a Range Rover in a big city with Wellington boots at the front door, and the only use it gets is to do the daily school run.

Tameness festival – my more representative name – has cornered a niche market in the festival world. The posh crew want their mates to know that they spent a week in a field camping, but they just want to do it in a bell tent with Michellin starred food and the odd champagne glass on tap. I hear the drone of one man on the first day that sums it up – “you can’t really do Wilderness on less than £500 per person”. And he’s not including the ticket price in that figure, either.

“Wilderness’ Festival bell tent – that will be £2000 please, sir”

When you look at the map of Wilderness, one thing becomes instantly obvious. The glamping area is as big as the general camping area. Just near the Main Stage sits the Entrance to Wilderness’ Boutique camping. Prices start at £900 and go up to some of the Airstream’s sitting at around two thousand of your hard earned pounds for a long weekend.

A stroll through the general Camping fields, sexily labelled Zone 1, 2, 3 and Quiet Camping is at first confusing. The fire lanes are about five times the size of a normal fire lane, enough for around 5 fire engines emerging to save the day side by side.

By Friday afternoon, Quiet camping is full and reports come through that there are only spaces for around 10-20 more tents in the other General Camping Zones. It’s not surprising. A normal tent pitch is around 3 metres by 3, especially when you look at the number of cheap, disposable pop up and festival tents sold by retailers. Here the average pitch seems to be around 10 metres by 5 metres. Families have ringfenced areas, stuck up gazebos, and amassed massive family tents for up to 14 people that are banned at most festivals. The number of bell tents on display make it look like they’ve stuck Boutique Camping and General together, but it’s just a true reflection on the customer base. 

Anyone fancy some Axe Throwing?

The marketing campaign should say something like “Wilderness presents many possibilities for the discerning festival goer with money”. At the cheapest end, you can throw some axes by one of the five lakes. Down by Lake Superior, revellers can go swimming or rowing. The second day they open up the naughty lake, swimming costumes are optional, and for some of the public, it’s quite scandalous.

Elsewhere on site, there’s the climbing wall that gets erected and taken down each day, and horse riding activities and bike rides. If you want to get rid of the kids for a night, you can put them into a Wilderness Escape Evening, and pick them up in the morning.

There’s no real need to be energetic, though, when you see the wealth of food and drink on offer.

Game, Champagne and 8 Course Banquets

On the second evening, I’m stood outside the Veuve Cliquot Champagne Bar. Yes, you did read that correct. A few years ago I had a lovely private tour of the VC Cellars in Reims, and all for the price of less than two glass of champagne here. Of course, if champagne isn’t your thing there’s a few other options including the Patron bar too.

On Sunday, I also relax for a pint at the Mahou bar. It’s more my style, a little less upmarket, but there’s wicker garden furniture and tables under umbrellas to relax in and enjoy the sunshine. It’s my first time drinking a Mahou, and at £6.50 a pint, it’s a bargain by Wilderness standards.

The old school style of festival catering was burgers, chips and greasy food, but as you’d expect there’s an array of lovely cooking on offer. Over the weekend I try coffee from many of the Artisan Coffee Vans (their phrase not mine), grab a Brownie from the stall that does nothing but brownies, sample the pad thai noodles, and stop off at the Dosa and Happy Maki stores. Dosa is South Indian fair, stogey but appetising. The Maki guys make the best sushi rolls I have ever tasted. Try their Hoisin “Duck” roll, made with soybean in replace of the duck, hoisin sauce, cucumber, peppers, rice and brave it with ginger and wasabi. It’s filling and delicious.

One of the other main draws to Wilderness is their sit down banquets. They are becoming more prevalent at all festivals, but while most sites have 1, at Wilderness I counted 8. Generally pre-booked, there are a few that take first come first served reservations on the day. Put aside £55 – 90 and you can sit down for a few hours, working through 3-8 courses of professional chef fare. Tables, tablecloths, cutlery – it’s the real deal.

Robyn – A Headliner like no other

In an attempt to get to the heart of what Wilderness is really like, I’m standing in the crowd on a Saturday night watching Robyn. She’s the second headliner on the Main Stage, a large W sits prominently at centre top over the stage – it reminds me of the Waterstones logo. She’s definitely popular for a lady whose repertoire includes one or two songs that
people actually know, and the crowd is full of families and middle aged men and women.

By festival standards, it’s an underwhelming affair. My first impression is that Robyn is older than I’d expect, her dancing straight out of a 1990s B Grade music video. She may be your drunken mum on the dancefloor at your wedding – embarrassing, but she looks like she’s having fun.

She swaps from dress to jacket mid set, and crescendos to Dancing on Her Own. Back to the audience, she hugs herself seductively and the lights go down. I feel like it’s the end of the set, until the lights come back on and she plays another song I don’t recognise. There’s a lot of tension, or boredom, depending on how you see it, as the songs slowly build and fade. There’s whole segments of one to two minutes which no singing. The lights start to dim, the stage goes dark, and again I think it’s all over. But Robyn is back, the song is not quite finished. Another song comes on, and she shows no sign of stopping. It’s right up the crowd’s street, so to speak, but I’m all “Robyned out” and have been for the past thirty minutes. I duck out the crowd and leave the families having the wild time of their lives.

The Naughty Corner

Elsewhere across site, I look for Wilderness’ naughty corner. Every festival seems to have one, and though Wilderness is exceptionally pleasant, organisers have set up a new late night venue called the Valley.

Big signs show that the Valley will open from 10pm only. I queue in amongst the younger crowd here. They’re drunk and keep moving despite themselves, stepping into people and barriers as they move. I suspect if you extracted the amount of substances in these kids it might look like the pile of dinosaur poop from Jurassic Park.

The festival has erected a never ending back-and-forth pedestrian barrier queue, where you inch forward to the Valley until you get to a set of stairs that take you to the main event.

Speakers are placed down the valley at intervals to the stage, club beats blasting, smoke hanging thick in the air from machines. A security guard informs me that people use the venue to have sex in the trees and hills either side of the valley, and that they had to bring in the specialist sub-contracted security team to deal with it. At any other festival,
this would be the Blue Peter corner.

It’s definitely a little grittier than the rest of the site, but still has a good vibe. If Wilderness was Bath, then the Valley is Bristol. Eclectic, more down to earth, and cosmopolitan, but it’s no Newport. The mood momentarily returns to normal Wilderness style as a man walks past me carrying a bottle of fizzy San Pelegrino water.

People are like moths to lights , converging on a set of vertical pink neon strips that hang over a gantry or what could loosely be called the Valley Stage, on top of which a DJ booth pumps out the slowly changing music.

It’s a DJ set which no real focus though. Turn up, forget, and dance to the rhythm, head tilted and swaying to the sky. Drink, smoke, pass out and then leave.

I fulfil my people watching and photography needs, and leave the naughty Blue Peterites to themselves.

A spot of Cricket / Sunday Hangover

Sunday morning Cricket is a tradition at Wilderness, and it’s absolutely bonkers. I’ve missed the Muggle Quidditch they do Saturday afternoon, but the Sunday cricket is the big one. It draws everyone nursing their hangovers from the night before for some upper class fun.

Today’s game is between fact and fiction. Fact come on to field first, consisting of a miniscule man-child Boris Johnson, Marilyn Munroe, Brexit, Climate Change and a Female Ejaculation among others. Dinosaur seems to be the wicket keeper, which is great because in his massive suit, he can hardly pick up the ball.

Fiction is batting first, Barbie Girl is first to appear alongside her theme tune. Jon Snow also enters the field, Game of Thrones music blaring, topless save a long fur coat, holding his bat high like a sword as he charges on to the pitch and cleaves his bat through the air.

The commentary is faux upper class. Brexit comes on to bat and starts to fake punch the NHS to the crowd before a team of spectators dressed as the Marvel Superheroes come on to carry Brexit away. It’s completely unstaged but bloody marvellous.

The commentator whistles, “and the superheroes have just dealt with Brexit. As if it was that simple.”

A few minutes later Brexit is bowled out and the whole of the Fiction fielding team pile on to him. The commentator swoons, “and they are all raping Brexit. It’s buggery and Brexit is out!”

Of course, one of the alternative attractions to the Wilderness Cricket match is the streakers. One of the Schweppes stall staff comes on in just an apron, bum showing and leaving not much to the imagination, handing out Schweppes Gin and Tonic cans. The commentator brands him shameless marketing, and that Schweppes is the worst gin in the world, and not to go to the stall.

Minutes later another streaker comes on full pelt, bits flying and smacking in the wind. He takes the ball off the bowler and bowls an awful pitch. Running back to the crowd, he puts a hat over his nether parts. The commentator chimes out, “he’s heading back to his family now, protecting his dignity with his hat”.

“His parents didn’t know he was going to do that. They just thought he was a banker, a massive banker.”

By the point I leave the Cricket match there’s 69 streakers on the board.  I hear there’s still twenty or so to go to make it a record.

Monday Memories

On Monday, you try to make sense of it all. Of course, the biggest irony of Wilderness that I’ve mentioned is it’s not Wild. It’s not the same as heading for the Scottish Highlands, small bivvy in hand and walking into the unknown for a week of wild camping.

Even by festival standards, it’s very tame. But it is lovely, different and refreshing.

And some of it has to be seen to be believed.

Just make sure you have some money to burn in your back pocket for the odd banquet and hot tub, and just go.