The Festival Desk

Every guide needs somewhere to gather. Ours is the Festival Desk: not a grand office, just a shared table, a long list of ideas and three people who would rather be out on a Saturday than talk about it. This page explains who we are and what we do with the time we spend at it.

Who sits at the desk

We write under pen names. That keeps the attention on the ideas rather than on us, and it means our bylines stay the same whoever happens to be typing that week.

• Euphrasia looks after events and festivals. She is the one who reads the bag policy before buying the ticket and always knows where the information tent is.
• Faramond covers home projects, trips and evenings in. He takes the train whenever he can and has opinions about overhead luggage racks.
• Lowenna writes about family days out and what to wear for them. Her packing lists are famously short and rarely forget anything.

None of us holds a professional title in these subjects, and we never pretend otherwise. Where a question really needs an expert, such as a structural repair, a legal agreement or a medical matter, we say so and point you towards the right kind of help.

What we do

Our work falls into three parts.

1. Collecting questions. Readers write in, friends ask over coffee and we notice what trips us up on our own weekends. Those questions form the list we work from.
2. Checking before writing. We read the organiser's pages, the operator's conditions or the manufacturer's guidance before we commit anything to the page. If something cannot be checked, it stays general.
3. Writing for the weekend. Each article is built to be used: short sections, practical lists and the most useful steps near the top. The details are in How Our Guides Are Made.

What we care about

Good weekends are rarely expensive or perfectly planned. They tend to have one thing to look forward to, enough slack to enjoy it and a back-up idea for when the weather changes. That thinking runs through everything from our family weekend ideas to the guide on train travel for a short break.

We also care about being straightforward. Articles keep their original publication date, mistakes are corrected when readers point them out, and pieces prepared with outside businesses are held to the same standard as the rest. How we choose what to recommend is explained on How We Decide What to Suggest.

Pull up a chair

If you have an event we should know about, a weekend that went brilliantly or one that went wrong in an instructive way, the desk would like to hear about it. Write to us via Send Us Your Plans.