Garden Festival - Photo Diary

Roz Wilson heads to Croatia to dance on boats with pirates…

One of the few festivals that can genuinely live up to the name ‘boutique’ as it has a capacity of only 2500, Croatia’s Garden Festival is fast becoming one of Europe’s hottest tickets. Some treat it as a warm up for Serbia’s Exit (since when did you need to warm up to go to a festival?) whilst those of us of a slightly less hardcore disposition made it into a proper holiday. The perfect festival for those who like a bit of civilised debauchery: there’s plenty of accommodation nearby if you don’t want to camp, the music is on a summery upbeat tip, and you can come in and out of the festival as you please – leaving you free to indulge in some of the delicious local seafood for dinner before heading back for more music.

Flights direct to Zadar can be quite expensive, so most festival goers flew into other airports in Croatia, such as Zagreb and Split, or even further afield to Italy or Slovenia. We landed in Trieste, Italy, and travelled down the coast by boat. What we learnt? Catamarans, choppy seas and hangovers don’t mix.

The Croatian coast is packed full of picturesque little islands – the perfect place to gather your strength before the festival or recuperate afterwards. We stopped off at a sleepy little island called Losinj with beautiful clean swimming water and a lovely old harbour town with plenty of great restaurants - try the local speciality of Black Cuttlefish Risotto: looks wrong, tastes great. The weather was perfect; 35 degrees celsius most days, clear blue skies, and only one morning of rain. It was time to whack on the factor 30 and jump in the sea to cool down.

The nearest town to the festival is Zadar – the centre is full of winding little streets perfect for losing yourself in. It also has two slightly more unusual tourist attractions. The sea organ, one of only two in the world, is a series of pipes built into the sea wall, which play an eerie sounding watery melody as the waves lap against them. Next to this is a giant flashing dancefloor. Quite why this is there, I have no idea, but it was just crying out for some Saturday night fever style posing.

The day before the festival we took a boat trip around the famous Kornati Islands. After a 6am start, we were promised a breakfast on the boat of sandwiches, coffee and orange juice. What did we get? A bowl of biscuits and a shot of Travarica - a local spirit of faint green appearance (which is pretty much how we looked after drinking it). Well, you know what they say – start as you mean to go on.

We weren’t organised enough to get accommodation right next the festival, so were staying in the neighbouring village – a 20 minute trudge in the midday sun away from the festival, or a stagger back in the pitch black hoping not to step on a scorpion or a snake (both of which were spotted!)

The festival itself is held in the grounds of a hotel in Petrcane. The guests staying who weren’t part of the festival did look slightly bemused by the proceedings, but took it all in their stride. All the locals we met were extremely welcoming (in the case of this chap – perhaps slightly overly so!) and seemed to appreciate our pathetic (but well meaning) attempts at speaking Croatian.

Surprisingly for a European festival, almost every single person there was British. On the first day we were slightly worried that we had walked into Shoreditch-on-sea, evident by the high proportion of trilbies and ‘ironic’ sunglasses.

However, all our fears of a too-cool-for-school crowd were soon allayed, as the atmosphere throughout the festival was so friendly that at times it felt more like a giant outdoor house party.

Headlining the festival was Mr Scruff, who we managed to pin down before his set and engage in a rather intriguing conversation about pigeon cheese?!

The Bays were on excellent form as always – and judging by the crowd reception, were one of the most anticipated acts of the festival.

Crazy P were another highlight – their sun-drenched funk-fuelled pop was the perfect soundtrack to a balmy summer night, and frontwoman Danielle Moore did a sterling job keeping the crowd going with her tambourine playing antics when the power cut out for 5 minutes.

Aside from the main stage, DJs played in a bar on the seafront, so you could dance by the water as the sun set…

…or even in the sea!

One of the best things about the festival is the boat parties – two a day go out to sea for 4 hours all hosted by different promoters – from Faith to Mulletover.

One of the ‘moments’ of the festival had to be 150 clubbers singing along to Fleetwood Mac at the tops of their voices, whilst the top deck all started doing co-ordinated dancing!

Most people dressed appropriately for the boat parties…

…others less so. Buzz Lightyear only lasted 5 minutes before he had to take his body suit off.

The last day came….and nobody wanted to leave. You can tell The Garden Festival is a friends and family run affair, they even put on buses to take weary festival-goers straight to the airport. We all managed to get back intact – well, almost.

Thanks to Tim Turnmaster, Tom Oldham, Lauren Blakely, Sol Cuming and Yawen Ho for the additional photos.

Published: Mon, 21/07/2008