Where: Dapdune Wharf- Guildford. When: September
Yesterday we attended the 31st annual Festival at Dapdune Wharf. The Wharf run by The National Trust and boasts a beautiful river location on the Wey navigation, complete with cafe, picnic area, museum, and second hand book shop.
The festival runs for the whole day from 10am-8.30pm and offers many activities and stalls, and is finished off by a charming parade of boats lighting up the river with colourful lights and music.
To the left of the docking yard we followed a grassy trail to all the children's activities, ranging from crafts, lawn games, den building, archery, and more. If you follow the trail round, you reach a small island allowing you to overlook the other side of the Wharf through the trees.
To the right of the entrance, you will find the cafe, boating dock (where you can book boat trips), picnic area, more local stalls, live music and food stalls.
The music was wonderful and really set the scene, playing traditional jazz, swing and Charleston, it was a perfect accompaniment to the beautiful scenery and weather.
The food offering consisted of an Ice cream truck, stone oven baked pizzas (which I had and it was delicious!), donuts and sweats, waffles and coffee truck.
There was also BBQ sausages outside the main cafe. My only gripe I will mention here is that there was very little in the way of meat free options and if you've vegan, next to nothing. So, you may need to consider bringing your own food, if you are meat and dairy free. I do find the really disappointed given that so many people nowadays are not only meat free, but are unable to eat dairy.
I managed to find a vegan roast vegetable sandwich in the cafe, but as a cold option (as i was told there was no option to heat this) did not sound appealing.
The only other small point I'd make is that between 5.30 and 7.30 until the boat show begins, there was no further entertainment for children or music. Although, you can visit the book store, and museum.
I feel like it would have been lovely for there to have been a band playing during this time to fill in the gap.
All in all, a really great little free family festival, highly recommend.
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