In June 2004 twelve young carers from Surrey attended the fifth annual young carers festival in Southampton. They were accompanied by, Michelle, Geoff, Matt and Ailsa.

We left Guildford late on Friday afternoon to travel by mini bus the festival. The mood was quite solemn as the previous evening England had lost to Portugal in Euro 2004. It was decided that football talk on the mini bus would be banned as we were going to have a great weekend and also because Matt was going to cry.

Once we had arrived our first task was to pitch the tents. The young carers were lucky as theirs had been put up for them. Two hours later the staff had managed to pitch theirs.

There was so much to see and do, so little time and over a thousand young carers from across the country to meet. On the first evening there were live bands on stage, Dragon heart being the most famous. (They had reached number 10 in the Welsh chart). However this did not put us off. Later that evening there was a DJ playing in the main marquee until the early hours.

The next morning we were up bright and early. Matt started a football match with some young carers at 4am. After breakfast the day's events began including canoeing, abseiling, workshops, live radio broadcasting, football tournament, high ropes and much more. The only problem was the weather, it was raining all day.

In the evening Dragon heart played live again, despite the protests. The DJ played hard house until the early morning which even the seasoned ravers found hard to keep up with, although Geoff, Michelle and Ailsa tried there best.

On Sunday the closing ceremony brought all the young carers together to say goodbye. It had been a fantastic weekend and the young carers from Surrey had done themselves proud.

For those of you who can bear to hear them again here's a link to dragon hearts website

Dragon Heart

For happy memories click on this link for a virtual tour of the festival site.