[press invite]
Previously called Leefest, the wonderful boutique Neverworld Festival takes place in Hever, Kent in the height of the UK summer. This year I went along for the first time on the 2nd-4th August with some friends and had a glorious time in incredible sunshine, whilst covered in glitter. That doesn’t sound like me, eh? 😉 This festival is definitely one of the smaller ones, but it does have one helluva heart.
Pirate, Mermaid or Lost Boy?
Neverworld is a festival of fantasy! It’s a family friendly event based loosely around the adventures of Peter Pan. There are four realms (areas) in the arena: Pan’s Playground, Mermaid’s Lagoon, Skull Ridge and the Neverwoods. You’re also invited to join a tribe; will you be a Pirate, a Mermaid, or a Lost Boy? Of course I chose Mermaid – I love the sea!
There’s so much fancy dress at Neverworld from attendees showing their tribe pride, and there are also actors in each of the realms which lead various games throughout the day. We befriended “Poseidon #1” from Mermaid’s Cove, and because the festival is quite small, kept bumping in to him everywhere… he would always look out for us to come and be our dance partner for a few minutes at every opportunity!
Check out this page on the website to read about the Realms in depth and help you decide whether you want to be a Pirate, Mermaid or Lost Boy, then check here for outfit inspiration for the different tribes!
The campsite & arena
What I love about these smaller boutique festivals is just how easy it is to get around. The car park is about a 10 minute easy walk from where you’ll be pitching your tent, and the “arena” (main festival area where the stages are) is another 10 minute easy walk from there. When you’ve forgotten your sunglasses at the tent, it means everything to be able to nip back and still return in time to see the band you were waiting for. At Glastonbury this similar scenario has resulted in me buying extra pairs of sunglasses to save missing a band!
There’s lots of space in the campsite, so no worries for anyone arriving later on the Thursday like I did. Of course if you’re coming in a big group, best to arrive as early as possible, but there was plenty of space for single-tent late additions, and enough space between the tents throughout the weekend so we never felt crammed in.
There are free showers in the campsite; I used them on Saturday about 9.30am and queued for around 25 minutes which was reasonable. The toilets were all portaloos which was a bit of a shame, I’m hoping they’ll be able to get compost loos for 2020, but I will say there were enough of them and they were always clean.
The campervan area is large and next to the main campsite, so is equal walking distance to the arena. Another bonus, as at a lot of festivals, they put the camper van area furthest away. I’m tempted to bring my camper for 2020!
Cashless wristband system
Neverworld festival operates a cashless system, using plastic barcodes attached to your wristband. You can top these up before you arrive on site, by using your phone (as long as you have 3G signal!) and also by finding some of the on site top up points/team. It works well at the bars, and makes payments much quicker. The only thing is, it can be a bit irritating when you’re a £pound or two short once you’ve ordered a drink, and then have to go and find a top up point, especially later in the evening. If there was more phone signal and you could top up easily on mobile that would work well. Or the best would be to go cashless but to ensure card / device payment definitely works.
Neverworld Festival is a dog-lovers heaven
One of, if not the, best thing about Neverworld is that you can bring your dog! I’ve only ever been to one dog-friendly festival before, and that was Secret Garden Party (which doesn’t exist anymore). A dog’s ticket costs just £10, and I gather most people who bring dogs stay in camper vans.
This is brilliant for a dog lover like me, as there are dogs everywhere! I made so many new woof friends over the weekend. It really was a joy to see them around the festival site! I’m hoping to get a dog soon and I’d be so excited to bring them to Neverworld in the future…
The Main Stage at Neverworld
Sitting in a very slight natural bowl, the Neverworld festival main stage is perfect from all angles, and big enough to host such great artists as The Vaccines, Professor Green, and Craig David this year. In the day time there was plenty of space to dance, but in the evenings the place was packed while the vibes stayed high.
WMT favourites, Too Many T’s, played one of the earliest slots on the Saturday to an almost empty field to begin with! We were a bit shocked most attendees weren’t up and about yet. But as their set went on, people rushed over the main stage to enjoy the T’s hip hop wake up call, and the crowd was jumping around in the sunshine by the end. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of seeing these guys live! Check out my interview with them from last year here.
On both days of Neverworld they had excellent afternoon artists on the main stage. On the Friday I really enjoyed the Futureheads, and then Tom Grennan who’s live voice was even more gorgeous than I anticipated! He even brought gospel-style backing singers who sounded phenomenal, and the whole crowd sung along too.
Lucy Spraggan on the Saturday was a surprise delight! I’d not heard of her before, but recognised some of her songs. She drew a large crowd, and my friends told me she first appeared on X Factor. I really enjoyed her folksy foot stomping tunes, and am hoping I see her again soon!
Friday night headliners were The Vaccines, who again surprised me by being much more raucous and brilliant than expected. All of their songs sound better live, and the fast-paced indie rock elevated the crowd to epic energy levels.
Saturday saw two incredible artists close the main stage – Professor Green followed by Craig David. Pro Green arrived on stage absolutely smashed 🥴 (by his own admittance!) yet still he somehow managed to remember his lyrics and deliver them brilliantly. He’s actually a very funny, down to earth guy, with some bangin’ tunes, so the crowd lapped it up in classic British fashion! “You’re pissed, we’re pissed, let’s dance wahay!!”.
Finally, Craig David was the Neverworld Saturday night headliner performing his TS5 show, and do you know what, it was absolutely bloody brilliant. I’ve seen Craig David before many years ago and thought he was a bit naff, but his hiatus in the middle of the 2010’s clearly did him well because his voice sounded AWESOME, and although he was ‘just’ singing over sampled / mix tracks (that he was live DJing by the way), he was clearly singing fully live with no back tracks or place to hide, and his voice is genuinely so good.
Craig David also covered a few dance/garage tracks from the 90’s/00’s/10’s, and it was one of those sets that every time a song started, they crowd cheered and turned to their mates to scream “I LOVE THIS ONE!” in their ear. My favourite was his cover of Show Me Love by Robin S.
The Beach
In the Mermaid’s Cove you’ll find the Beach, which in the day time hosts a whole load of fun, and at night comes alive with some of the top DJ talents. The Beach has steps / seats on two sides of the rectangular space, and the floor is made entirely of sand. When we first went to have a look, they were hosting Headphone Yoga – everyone’s wearing headphones like a silent disco, but doing yoga too! Wish we’d arrived in time to get involved.
One ‘activity’ our group did get involved with at the Beach was Glitter Wrestling: a paddling pool filled with baby oil and a LOT of biodegradable glitter, and two people face off against in other in sock wrestling. The aim is to get the sock off the opposite person’s foot before they take your sock off your foot. Cue a lot of slippery slidey sparkly fun! Here’s a video of my pal Jason wrestling against his son!
The Saturday night saw us dancing with our toes in the sand to Mike Skinner on the decks. He played one of my favourite sets of the summer so far! Everyone had space to dance at The Beach yet the atmosphere was still crackin’. What was brilliant about this stage is you could take a dancing break and sit on the raised sides, which are also a great place to leave your shoes 😉
The Gold Mine
This stage was deep in Skull Ridge, the Pirate’s domain, and was a big surprise to me when we made our way there for Stanton Warriors. It’s actually a huge sunken pit in the ground that you can’t see on the approach. You go down a slope to this lower level, look up at the DJ decks above you and the colourful uplit trees over head. Being lower down in this pit allowed for the sound to be directed and amplified in this area. I was really impressed with the sound here!
Eldon and I were able to get up to side of stage for when David Rodigan played, and the view over the full Gold Mine was wicked. There was also the Absolut Vodka bar behind the stage, in Skull Ridge, so we could easily go and get their new ‘Juice’ vodka & tonics. The one thing with this stage is that it’s very popular, and there is limited space in the pit, so a queue formed quite quickly for the bigger late night acts.
Food & Drink
You all know how much I love to talk about food and drink! And luckily there were some fantastic traders to talk about at Neverworld. First off, the excellent Beavertown Brewery had their own craft beer tent, along with stocking the taps in the main bars too. I became quite the fan of their Tropigamma beer over the weekend… an even more tropical tasting version of their ever-popular Gamma Ray IPA. The bars were on the cheaper end of the price scale for a festival, with pints starting at £4.50 going up to £4.80.
I mentioned the Absolut Vodka van above, but wanted to go into more detail because honestly I must have drunk at least 10 of these over the weekend! They were serving new Absolut Juice in either strawberry or apple, served with tonic and fresh fruit for £7 (double measure). In the roaring sunshine we had for Neverworld, these were perfection!
Onto food! In the campsite, they had Original Fry Up Material serving up banging breakfast muffins! I had one of these all three mornings, they were that good. They consisted of a sausagemeat patty, bacon, egg and cheese in the muffin, with a chunky hash brown on the side. Obviously I immediately put the hash brown IN the muffin and covered it in ketchup. One of these bad boys plus a coffee was £9. They were the nicest guys serving the food too, and were playing some banging tunes! We were camped directly in front of them so made friends quickly!
My food discovery of the weekend goes to Flats & Smalls who sold Turkish pizza wraps, and amazing mezzes too! The “pizza wraps” were actually called Lahmacun, a Turkish pizza that is cooked in the wood-fired oven, with pickles, salad and rolled eaten like a wrap for £8. They also served it with some of the tastiest hummus I’ve ever had.
Finally, the big bright orange truck: Fryer Engine were serving Battered Chips – yes you heard that right. Your normal fish-and-chipshop-style chips, battered and fried again. You felt so damn naughty eating these but they were unreal! I had mine with curry sauce for £6.50.
THANK YOU NEVERWORLD FESTIVAL FOR ONE AMAZING WEEKEND!
Can’t wait to be back for 2020!
