Somewhere over the last thirty or so years, music festivals lost their innocence. Put simply, those who like the idea a lot of people having fun in a field are outnumbered by those who like the idea of a lot of people spending money in a field. At least amongst those who can afford to put on large events.

The Secret Garden Party represents the underdog in the case. The organisers shun corporate sponsorship in favour of silliness, hoping for nothing more than to break even and to have a good time. An expanded site for the festival’s fourth year and greater funding for its arts and crafts elements made this year the biggest spectacle yet.

Giant treehouses, birdhouses made of bread, nightly fire shows and a giant hand protruding from the lake around which the festival is set were amongst the many fixtures to sit and wonder at. However, it’s the huge number of revellers in fancy dress that really give the place its atmosphere - there’s nothing quite like an extravagant ball gown or a knight in full armour to distract your attention away from other attractions.

By other attractions, of course, I mean the music. Though bands of varying levels of fame are in abundance across a variety of stages, this part of the event can often become a background to cars sticking out of the ground and mass hula hooping. Regardless of your intentions and the small size of the site, you can guarantee that will see very few of the bands you thought you would.

For some of the performers this can be somewhat perplexing, even annoying. Those who enter into the spirit, however, are guaranteed to go down well. As Drive By Argument’s Stoke Brock put it during his band’s set, “We’ve played a few festivals this summer but nothing like this. Where else could I come on stage dressed as an emperor?”

Elsewhere, bands like The Noisettes and New Young Pony Club, who come ready glammed up, just got on with the serious business of rocking the place and drew suitably large and sweaty crowds to the main stage, in spite of the rain in the case of the latter.

As last year, the acoustic Living Room tent proved a huge draw. Though three or four times bigger, it still proved difficult to get in at times. None more so than for Newton Faulkner’s amazing performance. His mixture of every guitar playing technique imaginable is truly awesome to behold. When the electricity to the tent went out after his first song, he was unfazed, simply getting up on a table in the middle of the room and continuing. Power restored, his amazing, heart-wrenching cover of Massive Attack’s Teardrop was a festival highlight that will be long remembered.

The Secret Garden Party is the friendliest, most chilled out and most fun festival around where everyone is happy for you to do pretty much anything you want. However, you don’t have to dig too far to crack the blessed-out atmosphere and start people complaining. The long walk for those entering the site on foot, dodging cars and abandoning heavy belongings along the way, was one I promised to mention.

The toilets were also a major bugbear. Not normally a surprise at a festival, but in this case it did come as something of a shock. For the first two days, the toilets were emptied and cleaned every three hours and always had toilet roll in them. But without warning, this stopped on Saturday morning. By the time they were next cleaned on Sunday afternoon, well, you probably don’t need me to draw you a picture.

Sudden snaps back to reality like this taint an otherwise dreamlike world. Thankfully, these things don’t come too often and you can immerse yourself in a world where everything’s brightly coloured, everyone talks to one another, people are literally stopped in their tracks at the sight of the amazing views across the lake at night and there is always music playing, whether it be hard-edged electro or people drumming on upturned rubbish bins.

It isn’t so much that the Secret Garden Party recaptures the innocence of the festivals of the sixties and seventies; it’s more a forward-looking progression toward what festivals could be. A reaction to capitalism, rather than ignorance of it. Having fun without someone trying to sell you something; it sounds crazy but it might just work.

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