I have to say, it’s been a long time since I’ve been surprised by a festival quite as much as I was by this one. I’d never been to Noisily Festival before, I had only heard it’s name a few times spoken in hushed circles, and wasn’t sure what to expect. But I was absolutely blown away by the production, the vibe, how nice everyone was, the facilities, the actual site itself, the music… all incredible!

Noisily has a very hippie vibe to it, but set to an electronic soundtrack. 2018 was the 7th edition of the festival, and having spoken to people who’ve been attending since the beginning; although the size has gotten bigger, they creators of the festival have made sure they’ve stuck to their 6 core values: friendship, equality, love, passion, nature and community. It all leads to a very special weekend in the woods for everyone involved!

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Thursday – late night arrival

My festival Partner In Crime for Noisily was my awesome pal and EDM fiend Craig. Both of us had to work Thursday, but we got to north London (where I’d parked the car the night before for ease of exit! clever me) and were driving to Leicestershire by 6pm. After an easy-ish drive with a stop off for supplies we arrived on site about 9, and got in the queue for entry. The sunset was just gorgeous!

We got in quickly enough, and got set up in the camping area. It was my first time trying my new Regatta Vester 4 tent (will have a post up very soon about all types/shapes of tents and why I chose this one) and I have to say, it was easy to put up even in the low light conditions just after sunset!

Neither Craig or I had been to Noisily before, so we decided to head straight out to explore. Everyone always wants to know about the toilets, so I’ll say here, I was happy to discover they were compost loos throughout the site, and they were very well maintained! Perfectly pleasant!

The main arena of the festival – the valley in the woods – wouldn’t open till the next day, so we only had access to the area nearest the campsite which is called the Mind, Body & Soul area. For most of the weekend, this is where you would find yoga, mindfulness talks, crafts etc, but for the first night of the festival, the Mind tent had DJs playing and was packed with people dancing. We also had access to just inside the forest, where they had a Pirate’s Grog Rum Bar. It was here Craig and I went first for some delicious cocktails, and this is where I must comment on how reasonable the bar prices were. Proper cocktails were £7, pints were all under a fiver, a double and mixer was £6.50. For a festival, these are pretty great prices!

It was at the rum bar that Craig and I made two excellent discoveries. The first was that the DJ playing was amazing. He turned out to be one half of the Chicken Brothers, who were playing their main set on Saturday evening. We absolutely loved his style of mixing classic incredible hip hop on top of big bass beats. We bounced around for all of his set, and knew we had to make it to their main show on Saturday! The second discovery was even better; we made friends with a lovely lady called Laeticia, (or Tish as she was known), and we spent the entire night with her and some of her friends! I already felt that the Noisily vibe was so friendly, hanging out with Tish solidified it.

We stayed up dancing with Tish at the Rum Bar and the Mind tent until about 3am, then shared a pizza, before heading back to the tent to make sure we were ready to enjoy our first full day and first look at the arena.

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Friday – exploring the valley

Craig and I woke up to another sunny day… We had to throw ourselves out of the tent at about 8am as it was just too hot. The two of us were a little delicate so took a while to get going, but breakfast did it’s best to sort us out. We headed to the Mind, Body & Soul area and got veggie sausage & egg baguettes from Supernatural, and delicious iced coffee from The Shed.

Once we’d eaten and got ready, it was midday, and about time to head into the arena. I was excited to explore for the first time! Once you enter the trees, it’s about a 15 minute walk to the main arena area, part of which includes the famous steps… a pretty intense staircase as the final part of the walk. This proved very fun to walk back up again late at night when you were wobbly drunk!

The first thing we noticed as we entered was how much thought had gone into the layout and surroundings. There was artwork hidden everywhere, giving a real magical wonderland feel. There were three main stages – the Liquid stage (psytrance), the Noisily stage (house & techno), and the Treehouse stage (bass). The amazing thing was the volume these stages pumped out – each was nice and loud, the benefit of hosting the festival amongst the trees! Amazingly, there was no sound bleed between the stages; it really was the perfect layout.

There wasn’t anyone we absolutely had to see till the evening, so the afternoon was spent checking out the stages and getting our bearings. At opposite ends of the valley were the Noisily stage and the Liquid stage, each fantastically designed. The Liquid stage was a DJ booth built into a facade made of wooden hexagons, and the Noisily stage favoured triangles. Take a look:

For our main meal of the afternoon, we stopped at Burger Theory. I’d seen them at festivals before but never tried them. I am now wishing I had! We both had the Prairie Girl – southern fried chicken breast, hot sauce, blue cheese and lettuce, and I honestly can’t remember having a better chicken burger. It was amazing!

In the centre of the arena site was a theatre & performance area, and it was here we sat to eat our food, and caught Melon the Human – a circus performer that had my jaw hanging open! We ended up spending a bit of time here watching acts. It was a hot weekend so it was a good shady place to chill sitting down for a bit.

Craig and I had planned to meet up with Tish but stupidly missed the time and place, and we hadn’t got her number the night before. So when we went for an afternoon pit stop back to the tent to get changed and have a few tinnies, we were both delighted to find a little note from Tish with her number on it! She’d somehow managed to find our tent, having only visited it briefly with us the night before in the pitch black! How great is that? And again, it’s a testament to Noisily’s friendliness that she went to that effort to find us again!

When we returned to the arena a bit later, the sun was on it’s way down, and the true beauty of Noisily came alive! There were lights everywhere, and things popped out we hadn’t noticed in the day time. It was so hard to get good pictures, but this tree was a favourite of mine!

We spent most of our Friday night at the Treehouse Stage, starting with Niquid. I really enjoyed his dirty basslines! Was the perfect kick off to the evening! The stage itself is high up amongst the trees, and it felt like the DJ booth was looking down on this big crazy dance pit. There was a viewing platform too which was a great place when you needed 10 mins rest from all the stomping! We stayed at the Treehouse for a few hours, for iLL AUDiO, and then my favourites Stanton Warriors. We managed to coordinate finding Tish (phone signal was not great on site!) and after a while we headed off together as a 3 for an explore.

The Parliament of Funk was a smaller stage up a hill by the cocktail bar, and it was here we had a right old boogie, and made more friends! We got chatting to James, Cherry and Michael whilst taking a disco pause sat on a hay bale, and our squad was born. We spent the evening as a six-piece, bouncing between stages and bars; spending some time at the Noisily stage, then going seeing the full glory of the Liquid stage at night. At some point there was tequila shots… And I get a bit hazy after that!

I do know that at about 4am, Craig and I decided to call it a night and said bye to our new pals, but picked up some samosas from the Indian food place on the way back to camp. And so was born a proper addiction for our weekend – these vegan samosas were 4 for £5 and came with mango chutney, raita (not vegan), and hot chilli sauce. The perfect midnight (alright, early morning) snack! We went to bed with satisfied tummys.

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Saturday – hot tubs, football and dancing

Saturday was an even slower start to the day for me. Craig was slightly more active and went for a walk down into the arena to pick up breakfast. He returned with delicious overnight oats from Oatopia for us to share, whilst I was not quite ready to be anything other than horizontal. It was nice of him to essentially bring me breakfast in bed!

We had prebooked a session in the hot tubs at 1pm, so I got myself up and ready by about 11, and we went to look at some of the Mind, Body & Soul tents and activities. I got talking to the lovely ladies at the Girls that Grow tent, and listened to the end of one of their talks on sisterhood and empowering each other. I meant to come back for their crown crafting session but never made it in the end. We did end up joining an impromptu mini Ashtanga yoga class. Hangover be gone!

Soon it was hot tubs time, so Craig and I headed over the the Soak area just inside the woods (near the Pirate Grog rum bar I mentioned near the beginning). The tubs were the gorgeous wooden Finnish style, and can fit up to 8 people. As it was just us two, we’d booked two spots in their ‘social’ mix tub. It was £15 each (+BF) for an hour. Considering it included a shower, we both we’re very glad we booked this as the queues for the main public showers on Saturday morning were rumoured to be over an hour long. The heat meant people were desperate for a clean after two days of sweat! The tubs themselves weren’t too hot which we were grateful for, they were the perfect temperature to relax in. Our fellow tub mates were clearly in the relaxing mood so we just chilled and chatted. We were able to bring our own drinks to the tub too, and now I felt more alive, I nipped to the rum bar to get us each a cocktail.

There was only one shower in the hot tub area and it was very much on the cold side, but the queue didn’t take long and it turned out to be very refreshing. It was fantastic to be able to wash my hair. I felt like a new woman. On the way back to the tent we stopped by the LoveSpecs stall and I got myself a new pair. LoveSpecs donate money from each pair sold to families in Malawi, and they’re the coolest thing to wear in the night time at festivals!

I donned my Headspace Headdresses new Disco Monster headpiece, along with my new Dulcie’s Feathers kimono, slapped on some glitter, and off we went down into the valley (arena). One of the places I spent the most money over my weekend was Mr Scrumpy – they sold cider in SLUSHIE form, and had two flavours: Apple & Pear, and Blackberry Blush. It was £4 a go, as alcoholic as normal cider (5%), and came as frozen slush! It was absolutely dreamy on the boiling hot days! We picked one up most times we passed on the way to the arena…

Though we’re not usually football crazy, World Cup fever had taken us both, and we headed to the Cocktail Bar where they were showing the England vs Sweden game. We arrived just before kick off at 3pm, and struggled to see the screen as it was packed! The atmosphere was brilliant though, and at half time I nipped off to get some more samosas, and came back to find Craig had found us a great space with a clear view. The second half was fantastic to watch, we all got covered in beer when England scored the second goal, and the scenes when we won the match were electric! Check out this video to see the happy colourful festival crowd singing football’s coming home..

After the football, we met up with Tish and friends, and then it was time for the Chicken Brothers main set at the Treehouse stage (this was the DJ we saw on the first night and loved!). This time there was two of them and the stage suitably bigger. We stayed for pretty much the entire 2 hours set, only nipping off to get a drink from the bar or for the toilet. These guys were honestly my audio discovery of the weekend, I hope I see them again at festivals soon! Such a good set!

We spent a good while chilling after the Chicken Bros… it was time for some more food whilst watching the theatre and performance area. I went for a Thai style venison wrap from Got Game?  which was absolutely delicious! It had homemade slaw, tomatoes & onion in a similar style to pico de gallo, venison chunks and peanuts. I will definitely be looking out for them at future festivals!

We ate our food watching the theatre stage again, this time we saw the whole of the Interstellar Cabaret which was just mesmerising! We met up with Tish again and went for cocktails back at the Cocktail Bar. It was there we once again bumped into James, Michael and Cherry! We caught up with tales from the end of the previous night whilst sipping on watermelon coolers.

After another quick stop back at the tent (and a chat with the lovely people at the Psychedelic Colouring tent!) we came back in to the arena for our final night at Noisily Festival. We started off back at the Parliament of Funk for Mojo Filter and Olaf Stuut. It was much busier tonight and the tunes were fantastic. Turns out I really like funk!

We then moved to the Noisily stage for Quivver and stayed there for a an hour or two listening to his excellent branch of progressive house. One thing that really impressed me about Noisily was the number of water points around the festival. There was one even at the front of the main stage!

We bounced from stage to stage for a few hours; dancing, laughing and drinking. It really was a magical place, and everyone had a smile on their face. As I bring this to a close, that’s the one thing I want to stress about this festival. Every single person we spoke to was beyond lovely, and willing to talk or help out, whatever you needed at the time. The sense of community was incredible, I have only ever felt similar at Glastonbury, but the scale of that one dilutes it slightly. At Noisily, the love and community feeling ran deep and true.

I did not want to leave on Sunday morning that was for sure, but I had to get back to London in time for Wireless Festival (review coming shortly after this one!). Craig and I have already convinced our friends to go to Noisily in 2019, it wasn’t hard as they could see how enthusiastically we spoke about it. I can’t wait to get back and have a full weekend there – I won’t double book myself this time! 

I feel like I’ve discovered an incredible festival secret, the hidden jewel in the UK festival scene!

Thank you so much Noisily for the invite, I honestly cannot wait to return to the woods in 2019!

Click here to visit the Noisily Festival website

All photos taken by me or provided by Noisily and credited individually