South West Four

M and I got tickets to SW4 for the bank holiday weekend. I do like a bit of dance and trance, and we'd both been to Creamfields before so this was a nice change. M had been before but I hadn't, and it was nice to not have to travel very far to get there, it being held on Clapham Common! 

We were treated to glorious 27 degree weather which is rather unusual for a bank holiday in the UK. Normally it tips it down, so it was a pleasant surprise to not be having to wear wellies ;-)

We came up with a plan the night before as to what time we wanted to go. To be honest I've always been more of a follower than a leader, so I was happy to let him be in charge. His musical knowledge is far superior to mine, which we both know, so I didn't mind at all for him to decide what tents we went to. 

I wasn't sure what to wear today. Let's just say I wouldn't have felt entirely comfortable in typical festival wear (crop top, booty shorts etc) but it certainly was tempting given just how hot it was. In the end I stuck to my usual back jeans. Not very exciting at all. I wanted to wear flip flops but M suggested wouldn't let me wouldn't be the best thing. I reluctantly wore my Van's that I wore to walk around Amsterdam, but they made my feet so sore and by the end of the day they'd rubbed most of the skin off of my little toes! 

I was lucky that I persuaded him to let me park in his second parking space so I didn't have to leave my Mini on the street :-) 

We took a fast train- what with the Waterloo upgrade it felt like forever since I'd been on a train into London that didn't take and hour and a quarter to do a half and hour journey....

We walked to Clapham Common from the station. They said it would only take 11 minutes but it must be closer to thirty! 

We arrived around 3pm. The loose plan was to meet up with another friend of mine, M, but although we tried multiple times during the day and evening, we never quite managed to be able to be in the same place at the same time!

We had a good time listening to the music. At first I wasn't enjoying it as much as I was SO hot! But thankfully it cooled a bit and it was better. 

We had some food, and I conquered another milestone- using a porta-loo at a festival ;-) Not nearly as bad as I feared but not great either! 

Once it got dark we had to wait for the last act, which was supposed to be a favourite. After waiting ages, it was a bit disappointing, so we decided to cut our losses and headed home around 9:30pm. We walked SO far- my poor fitbit didn't know what hit it- I clocked nearly 22k steps today!

We walked for ages to get back to the station, but it was dark and cool so it was fine, apart from my poor feet. And my back! 8 hours of standing up and never sitting meant my back was so sore like I'd just done 300 back walkovers. By the time we sat down on the train my back muscles couldn't hardly relax and I wondered if I'd be a bit stiff tomorrow....

We were home by 10:30pm which was good because we beat all the crowds. "Water, water!" was the first thing on our minds once we got home! I'm not a thirsty person but the sweltering heat got to us and it was so nice to drink cold squash! We bought a water each and just kept refilling it all day. A good idea but I tried not to drink too much so I didn't keep having to go to the loo ;-)

We sat and chatted for a while, and then I felt my eyes struggle to stay open and I still had to drive home, so we said our goodbyes. I was home by midnight, tired, sweaty but happy.

We had a nice time. We might look more carefully at who the headliners are for next year so that we can decide if and where we want to go.

Despite wearing no suncream and not covering up, I'm not really sunburnt at all ;-)