I love it when a plan doesn’t come together.

And so it was over the Bank Holiday weekend, with an idea we had hatched as long ago as last November.

Ever since our children started going to big music festivals, a few years ago, we have been thinking that it really is something we should experience for ourselves.

How did I manage to live for 57 years without ever going to anything like Glastonbury?

But we didn’t want to jump in at the deep end and go to a big, busy and muddy one like that, so we bought some tickets for a version much closer to home, namely Lechlade.

Just to prove that we aren’t softies, however, we also signed up to camp there.

The eve of the festival finally arrived and we got the old tent down from the attic, dusted off the inflatable bed and found the trusty camping stove, ready for the next day.

That’s when reality dawned.

Not only was it already raining, but the weatherman was suggesting that anybody with any sense would spend the day building an ark, not pitching a tent at a music festival.

So we chickened out.

Call us cowards if you like, but we reckon we have done our fair share of what we call ‘liquid camping’.

There was that time on the Isle of Wight when we had to dig a ditch around the tent to stop it floating away; that unforgettable weekend in the New Forest when it rained non-stop for 24 hours; and the trip to Norfolk when our tent got blown about so much, we nicknamed it ‘The Lung’.

In the end, the weatherman got it completely wrong, but there are even worse things about camping than bad weather, and when we saw the minimal showers the festival campers had to share and the portable toilets lined up like daleks, we were so relieved to have moved on to Plan B.

This involved driving to the festival each day and returning home to our dry, comfy, clean bed each night, and the heaven that is one’s own bathroom.

Although we had heard plenty of Glastonbury horror stories and were bracing ourselves for the bad bits, none of them materialised at Lechlade, which only seemed to deal in all that is good about music festivals.

At the very time we were enjoying it, another festival (in Portsmouth) was being cancelled because of the tragic death of two young people on site.

At Lechlade, it felt perfectly safe. We saw no evidence of anybody doing drugs or drinking just to get drunk. No shouting or swearing, or pushing, or pushing in.

In fact, the selfishness and impatience that seems to have become a feature of life in Britain these days was nowhere to be seen.

Everybody was there to have a good time, but not at the expense of others.

Yet the ticket prices were reasonable and, inside the venue, so were drinks and food which were no more expensive than in the village.

And then there was the music. Such festivals are a real pick ‘n’ mix, so you get to enjoy some acts that you might otherwise not have heard, from talented young people trying to make a name for themselves to a crazy band playing Cuban music and spilling over into the crowd. And most of the headline acts were cool, too.

We’re already planning to go again next year, and would recommend it to anyone, especially if you haven’t been to a music festival before.

Camping is probably off our menu for good, come rain or shine, but next time we might try glamping. (Glamping: noun, British, informal; shameless cheating.)