Come and wild swim at Deer Shed festival
Join our features writer Rowan Clarke at the Wilderwild Retreat at this year’s brilliant, independent family-friendly Deer Shed Festival.
With its wellness and joy-bringing benefits, outdoor swimming at a festival is one of the life-affirming ways to spend your weekend. Deer Shed’s sell-out wild swimming programme is back this year, and our features writer Rowan will be running a guest session.
Swim wild
Led by renowned English Channel swimmer and advocate for the mental and physical health benefits of wild swimming, Debbie Adams, and SwimMastery and Total Immersion-trained wild swimming coach Claire Sutton, the wild swimming session is a core part of the festival’s wellness offering.
Rowan will be running her session alongside Johnny Hartnell, aka The Wild Swimming Yorkshireman, Thao Do from Wonderful Wild Women, author of Wild Swimming Walks and Wild Guide North East England, Sarah Banks, and H2Open’s Fenwick Ridley.
As well as a range of introductory, advanced and social wild swim sessions to help festival swimmers find the right session for them, there will also be new Night Wild Swim Sessions, offering a truly unique opportunity to be immersed in the tranquil water of the River Swale guided by the soft glow of luminous floats under the stars.
Wild wellness
As more and more festival goers make wellness a part of their experience, Deer Shed is one of the best UK festivals for wellness. Having championed the DIY mindset from the getgo, Deer Shed’s own co-founder Oliver Jones has worked with Hive Sauna to build the festival’s very own Off Grid Sauna and River Plunge Experience offering social and private wood-fired forests sauna sessions followed by an invigorating river plunge, all supervised by HIVE Sauna’s experienced sauna masters, with a dedicated plunge monitor and qualified lifeguard on duty.
As well as swimming and sauna, you can experience sound baths or take a yoga class in the Yoga Yurt as part of Yoga Kula Presents, a collaboration with the prestigious Leeds-based studio Yoga Kula.
There’s chill and wellness for the whole family, too, with a Family Yoga Workshop especially put together for all ages, blending fun poses, partner stretches and mindful games, and a Moon Bathing session that explores gentle movement, breathwork and meditation under the moon’s glow.
Brilliant line-up
The festival’s music line-up is pretty impressive, too. Headlined by Sleaford Mods, Everything Everything and Say She She on the main stage, with comedian Stewart Lee, The Adam Buxton Band and Rachel Parris in the Big Top.
This is a super, independent festival in Baldersby Park, between Ripon and Sowerby in Yorkshire – a colourful celebration of contemporary music, comedy and cultural creativity.
To book tickets and see the full line-up, click here.
To book wellness sessions, click here.
