The Adventures of Kerriann: From Kaya to Fairborne!!

I spent three days living in Lady Sage after Cae Mabon, I travelled to the North of Wales where I met a lovely random lady who, having stopped to say hello, spent over an hour sitting on my bed discussing life!

I travelled down to Chester to meet up with Lou and her family before at last I headed home to pack Lady Sage ready for Kaya Festival in South Wales.

From past experience I knew 'T' was not the best at communication.

In 2016 I had only discovered my request to join the Kaya team as a Story teller had been confirmed when a friend pointed out I was on the official Poster!!

When I arrived in the country in April, I had made contact with 'T' to confirm I was still invited to the 2017 Festival and although he had welcomed me with open arms, I had not heard anything since then.

I sent a quick e-mail but I did not worry unduly when I didn't get a reply.

With Lady Sage loaded and bursting at the seams, it was decided that Tom and I would go down to the Kaya site on the Wednesday morning and Peter and Cian would follow late afternoon after Cian returned from a dentist appointment he had waited months for.

Three hours after leaving Machynlleth Tom and I pulled up to the festival gates to be greeted by a sign that read 'KAYA CANCELLED'!!!!

Cancelled!! Ummmm when????

I approached a passing person to ask what was going on, but they only knew it had been a last minute thing. I asked everyone I could find filling in bits of information the best I could.

The licence holder, who has to be on site at all times or a festival cannot be held, had been rushed to hospital. No licence holder on site meant no festival!!

I called Peter and Cian to tell them to stay where they were and drove another three hours back to home!!

To say we were all disappointed is the understatement of the year! Cian and Peter searched the internet for other festivals we could attend but without enough time to contact them plus set up, the weekend was a washout!

I unpacked Lady Sage and got myself a beer!

By late evening Peter had had enough of all the long faces!

“Right!” he said, “we'll go to Scotland a week early and in the meantime we'll go on holiday!”

Three hours later thoughts of a weekend abroad had turned to plans for a weekend of crazy camping in Fairborne!!

Vans were repacked with luxuries,

beds and bikes,

beer and fairy wings

and by mid morning, instead of waking up at Kaya Festival, we were setting up base camp beside the Fairborne train tunnel.

Over the next three days as the weather alternated between rain,

sun, thunder and more sun, we did whatever we wanted to.

Tom built us huge fires of carefully balanced designs, getting Cian to ignite them with powerful gas fuelled flame throwers

(No silly matches for these guys!!)

We ate blackberries and slept late,

(OK, I ate blackberries, they all slept late!!)

We warmed our boots and watched the fire burn through tinted snow goggle eye protectors

(one can never be too careful!)

We howled at the full moon

(well I did!!)

and drank copious amounts of alcohol!!

(while having our photo taken through said yellow tinted snow eye goggle protectors!!)

The boys disappeared on their bikes every few hours only to return dragging firewood supplies in their wake!

We dressed up as Fairies,

OK that was more me again!.....

............running up and down the embankment to wave at the train passengers as they headed into the tunnel!

By the end of the first day I had become quite famous and was even put on their website!!

We even had a day where we headed into the hills looking for a lake to camp by and to be fair we found three but by the end of the day we had decided the best place to play was definitely Fairborne!

We returned to our play area, rebuilt the fire pit and spent the night launching cider bottle rockets!!

The whole thing had started as a joke with the high pressure foot pump being modified to fit a biro tube that was sealed onto one of the empty cider bottles.