By Phil Spalding

cambolc.co.uk,  LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook

A puzzling title for today’s 250 pennies (word) of thought blog? Let me explain I have over the last four days ventured out the part of West Suffolk that is in the Greater Cambridge Area to distant parts in the East. The East of Suffolk at the Latitude Festival 2025. There I fulfilled my task I set myself back in October when I bought my Weekend Camping Ticket from Ticketmaster online (not a Campervan ticket but more about that on the BlueSky account to which is the link above). So there is the reference to Latitude. The image below is from the T-shirt merchandise of the band formed by fellow Dundee University Graduates (they were/are? younger than me) in ……. Dundee. The T-shirt is modelled by me and the wording at the bottom is The Forest is the Path. An apt title considering the underlying theme of the festival (it struck me that it a reincarnation of those medieaval trade fairs where entertainment was put on so people bought more goods, well it is the first one I have been to ever) of wellbeing and promoting a better understanding of the health and welfare of the planet and the species that inhabit it. You can see I am still trying to figure out exactly what I experienced over the four days. Maybe I am being too analytical as the curious individual that I am?

I did say the I went to the Far East, that is very true from the Greater Cambridge area which includes Haverhill and Newmarket as we have a CB post code, not an IP postcode. Having worked in the area both when I was an agricultural researcher and latterly as an educator I was able to get back home in just under 3 hours, 40 minutes spent patiently waiting to exit plus sundry minutes in the heavy traffic and diversions. So not too bad I do not know how those who headed south on the woefully inadequate A12 which links the largest town in Suffolk (no cities) to the largest city in Norfolk (there is only one). Probably not that well if there is a traffic incident on or about the Orwell Bridge. This is a not so suitable hint for some of that Sizewell C invetsment money be used for an alternative route.

Time to reign myself in as set a target for the word limit at 250 words but that is a bust after the last paragraph (but even 500 words only takes 3 minutes to read apparently). So back on track. The caming facilities were excellent. As I have never been to a festival before Glastonbury and it’s excesses never appealed, I took all my camping gear, but did forget the Wok. As I walked to my pitch an delicious smell wafted from the Toastie Stand, (see image below). I have cropped the original image to exclude the faces of the customers of all images, there wasn’t a point at which there was nobody ordering for me have a customer free full shot of the Toastie Stand.

When I first arrived ordered a hot jalapeno toastie. As I was waiting one of the staff commented on the fact that everybody seemed to have brought their own food and means of cooking, so wouldn’t be serving much. This struck me as a similar to villageb pubs. If you don’t loose them you use them. So I abandoned the idea of using the onsite Coop for food items and only used them for non food items eating at the Toastie stand for breakfast, and the excellent world wide in origin food stands. Even tried the Arancini featured in the Inspector Montalbano detective series.

So a big thank you to Millie and her crew who were excellent hosts and with whom I had some great enjoyable conversations, especially Millie.

Well my new wellbeing/mindfulness hobby, Archery is starting in 5 minutes at the field just over the garden back fence, so literally a local sport for me. With that I will leave you with the essence of my feelings left by Latitude on this afternoon return with a video that I have used before.