Lost Village festival review: is this posher than Wilderness?
Wilderness in the Cotswolds boasts a nanny service. You won’t be surprised to hear that it is the only music festival in the country to offer such a luxury. Admittedly, there is no such thing at Lost Village, although festival insiders refer to the Lincolnshire based event as the “Wilderness of the north” owing to its enviable range of banquet feasts and mindfulness experiences, which go far beyond the music.
I’m told the average spend per head is north of a grand per person, and probably more for those guests staying in the posh yurts at the heart of the festival, a short walk from the major stages.
Taking place in the centre of the country, a short drive from historic, old-world Lincoln, the festival attracts punters from both the north and south, giving you far more Geordie and Liverpudlian accents than your average festival crowd in the Cotswolds.
Lost Village 2026: banquet feasts, top restaurants
Lost Village specialises in dance music and attracts a party crowd, 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.
Like one big wacky immersive experience, Lost Village is filled with ‘lost’ planes, jeeps and motorbikes scattered throughout the forest setting, implying some kind of apocalyptic landscape.
One evening I found myself in a prettily decorated banquetting tent where chef Lee Tiernan, AKA Black Axe Mangal, is walking up and down long, prettily dressed tressle tables piling plates with grilled pork neck served with a watermelon and mooli salad. It is absolutely delicious.
I drink a chilled red and someone shouts down the table, mocking me for my trendy wine choice (but in a friendly way, because they’re drinking chilled red too).
This isn’t the crowd I’d expected to be up in the small hours dancing to techno and brandishing ‘doomph sticks’ (poles people wave around at festivals with funny animals sellotaped to the top of them). Apparently people who like partying in a junkyard of abandoned 747s also prioritise eating in the best restaurants.
Octopus, lamb in kashmiri chilli sauce
I’d begun my 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 I left — and after nailing another bottle of that chilled red — I was 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 drunk and hedonistic.
Miraculously, somehow, the next morning (it is the morning, 11:59am, I’m early for the midday sitting) Lost Village has turned all refined again. Back in the banquetting tent I have a nicely presented Aperol Spritz in my hand. 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 will 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, and Cornish lamb slow cooked in kashmiri chilli sauce with Lion’s Mane mushroom. I wash that down with yogurt, saffron mousse and mango ‘yolk’ dipped in white chocolate. The people sat next to me had been at one of these banquets every day, and had spent over a grand on their yurt, which had access to warm showers and ‘pamper rooms’.
It wasn’t just the makeshift restaurants 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