The thunder grumbles its way over the campsite, rain pitter patters on the sea of tents. The skies are dark and disconcerting, while our feet are strewn in mud. It’s Saturday afternoon at Down The Rabbit Hole festival in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and despite the weather the spirits are still high, with festival goers smiling, cheering and embracing the rain in every colour of poncho imaginable.

DTRH festival is set on De Groene Heuvels (The Green Hills) Nature Park on the front of a lake. The main festival area spans one whole side of the lake, while nestled around the circumference is artist and boutique camping. Overlooking the lake from the festival side shows just how much effort the team have put into the ambience, with beautiful lights and flags that wrap around the lake side.

The festival area boasts three main stages, plus smaller stages, as well as specialist areas like liquor bars, a salsa tent and a mojito bar spitting out laser beams in a forest. The mornings start with yoga and coffee, hula hooping and egg sandwiches, and as the day unfolds the activities are endless - you can paint pottery, screen print, build a raft out of recyclable materials, make jewellery, shop the local markets, watch some improvisation, eat some of the best festival food I’ve ever had and pop your head into the nearest tent for the music.

The impressive repertoire of music this year included PJ Harvey, The National, Flume, Mac Demaco and Lianne La Havas, Mura Masa and even then it’s still worth checking the programme to see who I’ve missed. My personal highlight was Flume as he blasted out tunes from his new album Skin, and I thought he seemed a lot more confident with how he engaged with the crowd this time. From someone in the audience I had the impression he was blown away with the response, and he gave the crowd an epic encore. In a similar vain, Mura Masa had the crowd warming up for Flume with heavy drops and his beautiful vocalist. Another highlight was Charles Bradley, the African-American political singer whose classics “The World’s Going Up In Flames” and “Victim of Love” were crowd pleasers.

Despite the impressive line-up, for me this festival has so much to experience that the music is just one piece of the adventure. The staff at DTRH know how to put on a great party and the weather didn’t stop anyone. It’s such an impressive festival with how easy it is and for me it felt like a brief holiday rather than a weekend I’d need a week to recover with afterwards. I’ll happily recommend this festival to anyone, even my mum. Watch the festival after-video here.

Image: Courtesy of Down The Rabbit Hole official website