All to the Good

In this country, September is about the latest month you can get away with an outdoor festival that involves tent and campfire activity. Nevertheless, when we (the London Bulgarian Choir) are invited to join Cerys Matthews at her new festival, the Good Life Experience, Veronica and I pack our Wellies and our cousin Liz, visiting from the States, and set off without a backward glance.  

Costume fitting under canvas

Held on the Hawarden Estate in Flintshire, north Wales, it's been planned as a celebration of the outdoors and we're promised the chance to learn the basics of everything from axe-throwing to butchery. The music line-up, curated by Cerys, is eclectic, with Romanian fiddle band, Paprika, offbeat comedy poet, Murray Lachlan Young, and of course, a Bulgarian choir. There's a fabulously colourful vintage fairground, too.

You don't often see a Helter Skelter these days...

Or chairoplanes...

We're on stage early and the crowd gathered in the yellow warmth of the marquee seem intrigued and entranced in equal measure by our hiccups and harmonies. Then, still in costume, we dance in our Welly-booted feet to the rest of the evening's line-up, singing along to a couple of Paprika's Balkan numbers we recognise.

Joining the audience

Paprika get the joint jumping

View from the loo

When the music finishes we make for a campfire to sing some more. Gentle songs to suit the midnight hour.

Late night campfire sing-song

The following morning we discover a team of chefs cooking slap-up breakfast on rotation, right by the campsite. It's a huge relief as there are no shops nearby and we haven't brought any food.

Life saver

We also learn that the estate is owned by the Gladstone family – descended from the former PM, William Ewart – and that there are all sorts of stately sights to be seen in the area. We start at the Gladstone Library, Britain's only Prime Ministerial library, built in 1889 when WEG's home could no longer accommodate his collection of some 32,000 books.

Cousinly clinch at Gladstone Library

It's said that Gladstone read a book a day and his collection – complete with his own hand-written margin notes and underlinings – is open to all. Battered old leather armchairs are tucked into alcoves where you can curl up with a book that might be brand new, or 400 years old. 

Atmospheric reading room

Gladstone sat here?

We order delicious homemade soup from the Food For Thought cafe and eat it out in the grounds where stone sculptures are dotted around. 

'Love' in Welsh

Before we leave for home we take a drive past the Gladstone mansion, just outside the village of Hawarden. It's palatial. And hard to believe there wasn't room for all those books.

Fellow singer Kalina – to the manor born