The Latitude Festival is clearly the biggest arts festival in the country, OK it may not attract the bands that Glastonbury does but the scope of the arts covered is greater.  The physical size of the festival means that you can explore the whole site in an hour or so and get your bearings on where things are for future reference, plus it’s a chance for kids to experience life without their Playstation and guess what they enjoy it.

One of this years innovations was strictly for the ladies, with the introduction of the ‘ladies urinals’ this made a significant reduction to queue times, much to the pleasure of the long time suffering women.

Some of the quirkier aspects of the festival include snow storms in the woods with children and adults alike running around as it were Christmas.  There were also art installations ticked away here and there which you could buy for charity.

The Friday started with glorious sunshine and a comfortable temperature plus a great atmosphere with everyone looking forward to the weekend, sound exploded from all directions, whether it was poetry, literature, comedy, cabaret or simply bands performing on one of the many stages.

 Walking back to the main arena we were captivated by a performance depicting the end on of the world, this was caused by The Hadron Collider Accelerator, not by atoms, but by cows and pigs colliding which resulted in all of humanity being covered in offal (maybe this was one of those things you had to be there).

After watching Safari deliver a laid back set on the Sunrise Arena, we headed off The Obelisk Arena for KT Tunstall who delivered a set which was ideally suited to both the audience and the time of day, she also had someone from Hands4U signing her songs which were also displayed on the video screen, so the performance could truly be enjoyed by everyone.  The set included favourites Black Horse & The Cherry Tree and Suddenly I See.

Off to the Word Arena to see Caribou deliver a great performance to a full house which got the entire place dancing for the whole set and at the end baying for more.

In contrast Lyle Lovett’s Acoustic Band played a beautiful set to a very different audience in The Word Arena, the band were later seen on the Sky Arts One HD Stage for a TV performance.

Back on the Word Arena, The Vaccines delivered a power packed set and proved that there is still great pleasure to be gained from the three minute song, such was the desire of the crowd to see the band that they climbed the poles for a better view, only to be told that the gig would have to stop unless they got down, the set list included Post Break Up Sex and Noorgaard.