Guide to the Splashy Fen Music Festival Southern Drakensberg

The Farm known as Splashy Fen is home to the unbelievable Spashy Fen Music Festival. Visitors to the annual festival start arriving on the Thursday before the weekend to select the best campsites- although opinions about what defines "best" vary greatly depending on the campers. Prime locations for some are sites close to the river, where children can play happily whilst adults listen to the music: others enjoy being closer to the big mountains, often listening to their own music and only going down to the stage when the most popular bands are playing. Huge tie-dyed sails are fastened to high tee-pee poles to create cool colorful marquees in varying sizes and shapes. Hundreds of smaller tents make up the balance- from exclusive four-by-four roof top tents perched on fancy four byes to the tiniest, oldest faded tent staked out next to a car that must have made the journey down the long dirt road on faith alone… The gate count reached four thousand by the Saturday afternoon, and that's only visitors to Splashy Fen, and excludes stall holders, organizers, press, and band members. The only indication of the numbers was the number of cars and tents; from every other aspect the Spalshy Fen festival felt like a large happy community all going about their own duties and tasks in one big happy family. Nobody seemed to mind what the next one was doing- a group of drummers kept a frequently altering drumming rhythm going on the mountain slope, with anyone welcome to take up drumming at an available drum. Spalshy Fen Stallholders chatted happily to friends, one of them, Tessa the local dancing teacher. Tessa had built herself her own private camp complete with toilet and shower behind her stall of soft fluffy tops and hats and had told her dancing class the week before "no dancing next week girls I'm off to live at Spalshy Fen…"