Wilderness in the Cotswolds boasts a nanny service, the only music festival to offer such luxury services. Admittedly, there is no nanny service at Lost Village, although festival insiders refer to the Lincolnshire based event as the “Wilderness of the north” because of its enviable range of banquet feasts and mindfulness experiences going beyond the music.
I’m told the average spend per head is north of a grand per person, and certainly for those guests staying in the posh yurt accommodation at the heart centre of the festival, a short walk from the major stages.
Taking place in almost the bullseye-centre of the country, a short drive from historic, old-world Lincoln, the festival attracts punters from the north and south, so the spread of Geordie and Liverpudlian accents certainly sounds more diverse than the crowd does in the Cotswolds, although perhaps that says more about quiet wealth today not presenting in the most obvious ways.
Lost Village 2026: banquet feasts, top restaurants
The festival also specialises in dance music and attracts a party crowd, which is a less obvious fit for luxury than Wilderness, which has a gentle British countryside aesthetic and spread of nostalgic 1990s rock bands and current pop stars.
By contrast, Lost Village is more like one big wacky immersive experience (there are ‘lost’ planes, jeeps and motorbikes spread throughout the forest setting, implying some kind of dystopian landscape) but apparently people who like partying in a junkyard of abandoned 747s also prioritise eating in the best restaurants. Demographically, it’s a fascinating mix.
Anyway, I’m in a prettily decorated banquetting tent and chef Lee Tiernan, aka Black Axe Mangal, is walking up and down long, prettily dressed tressle tables piling plates high with grilled pork neck, served with a watermelon and picked mooli salad.
It is absolutely delicious. We drink a chilled red and someone shouts down the table, mocking us at our trendy wine choice, but in a friendly way, because they’re driking chilled red too. This isn’t the crowd I’d expected to be up into the small hours dancing to techno while brandishing ‘doomph sticks’, which are poles people wave around at festivals with funny animals sellotaped to the top of them.
Octopus, lamb in kashmiri chilli sauce
We’d began our feast with whipped goat’s curd and mushroom mapo vol au vents and moved onto octopus with cucumber, sweet Sichuan viniagrette and pickled red cabbage. Before we left — and after nailing another bottle of that chilled red — we were presented with a family-sized bowl of panna cotta, with raspberry jelly and yuzu granita.
I danced all night long, got absolutely filthy in the ankle-high mud, got very (very) rained on, and watched people play into the festival tropes of being very, very drunken and hedonistic.
Miraculously, somehow, the next morning (it is the morning, 11:59AM, I’m early for the midday sitting) and Lost Village is turning refined again. I have a nicely presented Aperol Spritz in my hand, back at the banquetting tent. This time, the Indian restaurant BiBi is serving the banquet, the first of many throughout the day (others happen on tables buried deep in the woodlands, it is an adventure to try and find them and over dinner you make new friends).
Mango ‘yolk’, like a twist on egg yolk
This time I’m tucking into sweet potato chaat with tamarind and herb chutney, Cornish lamb, slow cooked in kashmiri chilli sauce with Lion’s Mane mushroom. Later I wash that down with yogurt served with saffron mousse with mango ‘yolk’, like a twist on egg yolk, dipped in white chocolate. The people sat next to us had been at one of these banquets every day, and had spent over a thousand on their yurt, which had access to warm showers and pamper rooms.
It wasn’t just metal cutlery that surprised me at Lost Village: later I’m sipping rose in a hot tub overlooking a beautiful lake. Is this posher than Wilderness? Not overtly: but perhaps the message at this gloriously escapist weekend in the woods is that wealth isn’t always where you anticipate it.
Go to lostvillagefestival.com