Archive for ‘August, 2025’

Green Man 2025

This was a sun-drenched, chilled-out Green Man festival, which reverberated to Free Palestine chants, celebrated tolerance and diversity, and delivered joyous moment after joyous moment. As always, the line-up was full of wonderful introductions as well as old favourites. The food and drink were next level compared with most festivals (the variety of cakes on the Llangattock School stall making up for the lack of mango ale or cider this year) and the rolling hills of the Bannau Brycheniog providing the ultimate framing.

Brown bear country

Slovenia, where markontour was holidaying recently, has the distinction of being both one of the most materially equal societies in the world (a 2nd placed Gini coefficient of 0.24, which is incidentally the same score Britain enjoyed in 1979 prior to Thatcherism. The UK’s score of 0.34 now puts us outside the top 40), but also has enshrined the rights of nature in its constitution. The result is a country that is visibly thriving (although I am sure there are a thousand problems not visible to the casual tourists’ eye) and brimming with biodiversity.

Latitude 2025

Four music-filled days in the idyllic grounds of a Suffolk hall, spent with many of my oldest and dearest friends – Latitude 2025 was, unsurprisingly, a joy-filled experienced. This was a year to particularly enjoy discovering new bands (a large chunk of the best of whom hailed from Ireland), although one headline act served up surprise euphoria. As usual, Latitude also delivered so much more than music, including stimulating nature and science stages, world-class acrobatics, and a space-faring puppet dog. Here follows markontour’s review of Latitude 2025.