Gentlemen of the Road Stopover...A festival full of fun!

I have a lovely group of girls that I always do festivals with and every year we like to choose a new festival to try. This year was one with a difference…Gentlemen of the Road Stopover  in Lewes, near Brighton.

Hosted by the epic Mumford & Sons, the global series of events began in 2012 and toured small cities and towns around the world, creating a unique experience for everyone involved, and this year was no exception. Staying true to the spirit outlined by the band…it was a music festival that celebrates local people, food and culture, where everyone pitches in and everybody gets something back.

Lewes is a gorgeous town steeped in folklore and history, famed for its huge celebrations each bonfire night, it was chosen by the band for its 2013 UK stopover because they’d heard that “The people of Lewes love a good hoedown” and how right they were, the atmosphere from start to finish was infectious, exploding into the sleepy town after the festivities, where the few local pubs, including The Lansdown Arms welcomed revellers to carry on the fun.

Music highlights include the soulful tunes of Bear's Den, playing ‘Isaac’, an uplifting rendition of ‘Home’ by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, a throwback to my younger years with Vampire Weekend’s ‘One (Blake’s Got a New Face)' and of course the headliners of the weekend Mumford & Sons with a rousing performance of Babel.

The site of The Convent Field was relatively small, but included all you could need in terms of food stalls, with the biggest queues forming for the hog roast. You may have struggled to find options if you were vegetarian as there was a lack of veggie stalls, however the main attraction was the popular Higgidy Pies stall which was a lovely addition to the feel of the festival.

On the second day we decided to bring our own picnic food (read Jane's recent blog post for picnic inspiration!) and laid our picnic blanket out right in front of the centre stage and enjoyed the gorgeous music of Bear's Den. This not only allowed us to save money but summed up the laid-back feel of the festival which is hard to find at other festivals I have been to in previous years where the crowds are claustrophobic and you are more worried about losing your friends forever because you need to queue for the portaloo! This was the most relaxing festival experience I have ever had.

We decided to use a new app to document the fun of the festival called Time Lapse, an app you can use to take photos that can be later rendered as a video with a backing track of your choice. You can choose to manually snap your images or program the app to take a snap every so many hours, minutes or seconds. For our first efforts, we ended up with a funny memory of the weekend set to the backing track of Mumford & Sons of course!  A full Katie & Jane review will be available soon.

When booking the tickets we were told the on-site camping had sold out and after a lot of calling round the local area, we booked to stay in the pretty coastal town of Eastborne in The Guesthouse East, which was £30 a night between 4 of us, we stayed in a fully-equipped suite with shower facilities and most importantly a comfy bed to rest our weary dancing legs! We pre-booked taxis to pick us up from Lewes after the festival which we had no trouble in picking up, and we travelled to Lewes every morning by train.

Overall Mumford & Sons seem to have packed a festival with everything they love and shared it with the world, I can’t wait to see where the next UK stopover for 2014 will be, but I would love to visit one of the US stopovers next year. It was such a unique experience, and really inspired me to look out for new, smaller festivals because they might be smaller in terms of its line-up but it packed a punch where it needed to, the music, the atmosphere and the friendly town of Lewes!

Stopovers in Simcoe, Troy, Guthrie and St. Augustine still to come this year so make sure you head to the main site to check the line-ups for each festival here. 

After each festival I love to purchase a little memento to put up in the apartment, and this One Must Dash print from Bodie & Fou is just perfect to remind me of the Gentleman of the Road printed onto the flags welcoming us to the friendliest festival on the planet!  Click the image to find out more...

Katie x

Fun in the Algarve - Burgau, Portugal

I've been visiting the tiny fishing village of Burgau on the west coast of Portugal for the last ten years (makes me feel very old!) and despite a lot of development in the area, Burgau has still retained its traditional charm. There are great deals on flights from many UK airports (I flew for £130 return with Ryanair and Monarch) so I met my friend there for a few nights last week and thought I'd give you a little insight into my trip.

Burgau

Unspoilt Burgau is just an hour's drive from Faro's modern airport and only 10 minutes from the larger town of Lagos making it a great location to visit on the coast. I would say that Burgau caters for everyone from families or couples to those who like a little more action!

My days spent in Burgau revolved around the beach - a beautiful, long sandy one surrounded by parkland and cliffs. There's a beach bar with friendly staff, fresh seafood and amazing cocktails which has been open for as long as I've been visiting - it's definitely worth booking a table overlooking the sea. There are watersports for those who are more active (we hired a jetski and with my normally sensible friend going 66km/hour it was certainly an experience!) but they don't overpower the relaxing beach vibe.

After lazing on the beach until the sun hid behind the cliffs, usually 7pm, we'd get ready and head to one of Burgau's traditional restaurants for some Portuguese fish or peri-peri chicken alongside the mandatory Sangria! My favourite restaurant in the little village is 'Ancora' - the food is fresh and sourced locally and the service is exceptional from the Burgau born brother-sister team. Portion sizes are large so make sure you're hungry when you book your table here!

While there our timings 'went local', which suited me - it meant we would go for dinner later and then head to the popular bar 'Smugglers' for post-dinner drinks. Smugglers is again, a traditional place with lovely staff who are talented at making numerous cocktails and Portuguese drinks (Pasteis de Nata cocktail is amazing if you like sweet drinks!). This is the place where the locals go for a drink after work so it's great to sit and soak up the culture.

Along with unique drinks, Smugglers offer delicious tapas served on authentic wooden boards for the midnight munchies... you would normally find us in here until 4am so we certainly needed a snack! I've ordered these gorgeous wooden chopping boards from Bodie and Fou to re-create the tapas at home! See our Products We Love page.

As my time was unfortunately short we decided to focus spending time in our favourite place, Burgau, although we did head into Lagos for a day trip on the Bom Dia...

Bom Dia Boat Trips

Bom Dia (meaning good morning) Boat Trips have been sailing from Lagos harbour for over 30 years using old-fashioned sailing boats and offer a number of different trips. We decided on the four hour 'Baia de Lagos' cruise which sails along the Bay of Lagos and through the striking caves and rock formations. Despite going on it before, we were happy to do it again!

We made our way to the harbour and joined around 30 others onboard the Bom Dia. Firstly we sailed along the coast where we caught glimpses of the other pretty towns and villages along with some secluded beaches which would be great to visit. We then dropped the anchor and, in groups, were taken in a smaller boat through the famous caves of 'Ponte da Piedade' seeing the caves fisherman named as the 'kitchen' 'living room' and 'garage' for various reasons. This little boat trip takes around 15 minutes and is really interesting to hear the area's history from the crew.

Back onboard, we were invited to take a dip in the sea while the other groups visited the caves. Despite not being a massive fan of the sea, we jumped in to cool-down - the sea was 21 degrees but it felt much colder once we were in!

When everyone was back onboard, a delicious BBQ of grilled chicken (feta for veggies) was served with salad topped with their lovely 'secret' dressing and bread and wine. The crew came around for a chat and to give you second, and third helpings of the food before setting sail back to Lagos harbour. It was spacious on the boat so gave us an opportunity for comfortable sunbathing on the relaxing journey back.

The 'Baia de Lagos' trip is a must-do while you are in the Lagos area and for 50 Euros with lunch and drinks it's very reasonable.

If you're looking for a traditional, relaxing holiday in the sun with lovely people I'd wholehearted recommend going to Burgau. There's lots to do in the area but just being in tiny Burgau is enough, I only wish I could have stayed for longer... oh well, it just means I'll have to make another trip to my favourite Portuguese village soon!

Jane x

The Color Run Launches in the UK - The Happiest 5K!

The Color Run is a unique paint race that celebrates healthiness, happiness, individuality, and giving back to the community and we're proud to say we completed the UK's first!

Originally created in Utah in 2012, The Color Run was quickly hailed as the most popular 5K series in the United States and as soon as we heard the news it was coming over to the UK we just had to book our place on what is known as the happiest 5k on the planet.

The first rule of the race is to wear white so we made our way to Wembley, raring to go with our race tops on and Color Run tattoos transferred!

The atmosphere was fantastic, and even though there was a wait of approximately an hour in the searing heat until we made it to the start-line, we were thrilled to feel part of the first UK Color Run.

It was with anticipation that we made it to the first 1K where we were showered with purple corn-starch powder. It was very busy through the stations so we had to make sure we found a volunteer to ensure we got as much colour on us as we could! A tip here, try to keep your mouth closed, my teeth also got a coat of purple, and the powder set Jane off coughing, but only for a few seconds!

At each 1k completed we went through pink, yellow and orange and saw some dedicated party-goers just sticking around the colour stations making ‘snow angels’ in the powder, it definitely felt like a celebration of happiness!

For such a hot day, we were pretty dehydrated throughout the run, and we do feel there should have been a few more water stations, but as the race isn’t long, we made it to the finish line in one piece.

The second rule of The Color Run, presented by Dulux, is to finish plastered in colour, which we happily were. Championing the Dulux mission of ‘adding colour to people’s lives’, we couldn’t think of a better brand association and title sponsor for the event. The Color Run is the ultimate celebration of how uplifting colour can be.

One downside was that we also had to queue to get to the finish line too. We were hoping to find water on hand as it was such a hot day but there was none to be seen among the crowds. Instead we made our way to the coldest beverage we could find, and keeping true to the colourful theme we each ended with an ice-cold Slush Puppy while we watched the Color Festival, the post-run party!

We would definitely recommend The Color Run to groups of friends that can party their way round rather than taking on a serious run. Definitely make sure someone in your group is the designated photographer; we were too busy trying to weave in and out of people to take photos during the run!

The official charity campaign is Cancer Research UK’s ‘Stand Up To Cancer’, so it’s a really worthwhile and meaningful event to be part of. Its aim is to inspire one million participants in 2013 to get active and motivate them to have fun with fitness, which is truly a great thing.

Future Color Runs in the UK are scheduled for July 21^st in Manchester, August 24^th in Belfast and September 14^th in Brighton.

You can find out more about the events here and follow the team on Twitter – they are great at interacting with their runners before the event!

Katie x

We Are Six Months Old!

We can hardly believe it, but this month we celebrated our six month birthday! A little cliché but time really does fly when you're having fun! It's amazing to know we have 181 days of creating our own path and truly feeling happy at work!

We are very organised, determined people and like to focus on our goals and achievements each month - we even write them on a joint calendar! This reflection helps us to continue to drive forward but also note how far we've come as with us being so busy it's easy to forget.

Katie & Jane, the business, has moved in many different directions but the focus is still on providing honest and simple social media training and consultancy. We've already worked with some fantastic people and are beginning to see their successes on social media after our training which is great!

We've already moved onto 'phase two' - our first app is set to be released this Autumn and we are very excited about it becoming available on the App Store... it'll be great to see the feedback. We're currently designing, researching and planning which keeps us very busy!

Creating our own business has allowed us to meet many inspiring people and being an entrepreneur is definitely a roller-coaster experience so it's great to have people to share this with. Here’s to the next 6 months... they are set to be very exciting!

Katie & Jane x

Katie's Favourite Achievement in the First Six Months...

Probably the six month point! Looking back over the past 181 days and realising how much we have experienced on this humongous learning curve. Katie & Jane is still very young, we have so much yet to come and we never stop, but when you are working for something you believe in, it doesn’t even register as work. It’s just challenging, scary, exciting, worrying, meaningful, amazing, weird, roller-coaster kind of fun!

Katie's Most Valued Advice So Far...

You can get thrown advice from everyone when starting out in business, and although we would recommend to listen and consider it carefully, it’s important to trust yourself and know when not to take it.

Jane's Favourite Achievement in the First Six Months...

The launch of our lifestyle blog and already seeing great interactions and the impact it's having on our readers!

Jane's Most Valued Advice So Far...

Sometimes it's best to 'just go for it' - not everything has to be planned out to the finest detail. It's scarier but certainly more exciting!

Social Media Success Recipe - Part 2 - Content, Content, Content!

We looked at developing an effective social media strategy in part one of our Recipe for Success, now here's part two with the most important section... creating social content.

Select your content wisely

It sounds a little corny but we really do believe when it comes to social media, content is king (or Queen!). The key to a successful, active social media presence is effective content but how do we achieve this?

Your content needs to be...

Unique

You need to give consumers insights that they can't get from you anywhere else other than your social channels. Think about what unique aspect of your product or service attracts your target audience and generate content ideas around that. Be transparent; let your customers in and give them some insight into your brand.

Useful

Always ask whether the content actually benefits users... social media users want information broken-down into simple, easy-to-read, to-the-point content. Questions to think about are 'what do my users really want to know?' 'Why is this content relevant to users?'

Engaging

Before you post check that the content engages users by asking questions or having encouraging calls-to-action. Also, engage with like-minded brands and companies, sharing information from them that may be useful to your fans. Building relationships with other influencers on social will impact your presence positively and help you to generate content.

Balanced

The ratio we advise clients for topical to brand posts is 60:40. We created this figure based on our experience of managing brand pages on social. The key reason for being active on social media is to engage and communicate with users. The topical posts encourage interaction and as long as this content is relevant and useful, when users receive the brand posts they love to engage with them. If you're stuck for topical content look at awareness days, national holidays and events that are relevant to your brand. We have a full list of them here for 2013-2014.

All images were created by A Beautiful Mess app... it's beautiful! Read Katie's blog post here

In part three's Recipe for Social Media Success we'll be talking about how to increase engagement levels (the key social media stat) and how to organise your social media content.

Jane x

‘Dance Like Beyonce’ with Seen On Screen Fitness - If in Doubt…Get Sasha Out!

As part of its first UK tour, Seen On Screen Fitness, the London-based dance and fitness company visited Birmingham at the end of June to run popular workshops from the critically-acclaimed ‘Beyonce Dance Series’ and we couldn’t wait to give it a try!

We arrived at the ‘Single Ladies’ workshop for a 90 minute session with Director Bonnie Parsons kitted out in the most dance-like gear we could find and began to learn, step-by-step, the first part of the infamous (and very fast!) routine by Queen Bey.

Bonnie was a fantastic and methodical dance tutor, teaching us slowly and covering tricky bits of the routine until we could (sort of) piece them all together to the music. We found that in 90 minutes we still couldn’t quite get it all quite right, but Bonnie made us feel like it didn’t matter, we could just let ourselves go and improvise to the tune!

 There were about 12 of us in the group, which meant that we could see all the steps and ourselves in the studio mirrors. We didn't look so much like ‘Beyonce’ as we were hoping for, but it was a hell of a lot of fun!

We were taught as much as could be within the time frame, with a performance at the end in two groups with one rule… if you weren’t dancing, you were cheering on the others!

Overall we had a fantastic time learning the iconic dance and it does prove that fusing fitness with fun and music that gets you motivated, really is the key to enjoying an active lifestyle.

We especially liked some of the facts about Beyonce while we were learning, however we would love more insight into the ethos behind her performances and the inspiration behind some of her most signature moves to further enhance the overall experience.

Don’t worry if you are inexperienced, these workshops are aimed at dance fans rather than pros and are all about the fun factor and feeling empowered, so give it a go and dance out your inhibitions.

To find out more about Seen On Screen Fitness, the London class timetable, the UK tour which is still to visit Bristol and Brighton and the many more dance workshops inspired by pop legends such as Michael Jackson, Rihanna and Britney, click here.

Location: Munrow Sports Centre, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, B15 2TT. This may change next time the tour visits Birmingham so follow @sosfdance on Twitter to be the first to know if it does.

Parking: A note to say we found it tricky to find the sports centre once on campus, so make sure you allow enough time before the start of the session in case you get lost, and miss the first section of killer moves!

Katie x

The Best Things in Life (in July!)

Inspired by our favourite magazine, Red, each month we'll be answering a couple of questions that appear in the magazine, as well as an additional question of our own!

The following questions are taken from July's Red issue featuring Sofia Coppola, beach barbecues and recipes from a new cookbook, Share, which raises money for Women for Women International.

If you have any questions you'd like us to answer in August, tweet us using the hashtag #katieandjane or email us at smile@katieandjane.com

Katie

The best things in life are...

Spinning: I’m not one for spending hours in the gym, slogging it out on the running machine just leaves me feeling bored and always as though I could have done better. Spinning is my new work out – I love the fact that for 30 minutes it’s non-stop and by the end of the session you are left feeling exhausted – but in a good way! It’s a great way to build fitness into your life especially if you are always busy and on the go!

Trying new food: I’ve been meaning to try Kale Chips for a while, and this month I found the time to bake some, they were surprisingly tasty and healthy too – the perfect snack!

A Beautiful Mess app: I haven’t found such a fun app in a while, I love being able to create little masterpieces to share with my family and friends. Now with a lot more borders and backgrounds to choose from, I would thoroughly recommend it to those who love photo-sharing apps. To find out more about it, read my earlier blog post here  

I never go on holiday without...

My favourite reading material: Red Magazine, Women’s Health and Zest. Three magazines jam-packed full of inspirational articles, facts and motivational women. Just the things to enjoy while relaxing on the beach, leaving me ready to hit the ground running when holiday time is over!

The social media question I get asked the most is...

‘Should I delete negative comments?’

The answer is a definite no! Social media is a two-way street and as long as you have planned for unwanted situations, then you should be able to resolve any issues efficiently. Social media is a place where brands meet their consumers face-to-face, and if they get this meeting right, it can be such a powerful way of building brand-loyal ambassadors that translate into purchasing product. Therefore accept that negative comments will arise from time to time, but deal with them proactively and ensure the customer has a positive experience. This will allow you to be public with your efficient resolution too – gaining trust in your company long-term.

Jane

The best things in life are...

Jimmy's Iced Coffee from Selfridges (me above drinking it!). It reminds me of days spent on a my favourite Greek beach!

The Happier app, I've banged on a little about it (find out the rating I gave it in my recent blog post here) - but I genuinely love it and so glad to have been able to share it with many others.

Training for the Color Run 5K in July, will it be the 'happiest 5K on the planet'? My legs will tell you afterwards!

I never go on holiday without...

P20 sun protector - it's the only product that doesn't aggravate my prickly heat. Damn you sensitive skin!

The social media question I get asked the most is...

'Should I join all the platforms?'

No but we'd always encourage you to test them out. On a personal level, try them, if you get enjoyment out of using them continue, if not then quit. In terms of when brands ask this question, this is exactly the need for a strategy first - discover where your target market is and join them there. Better to focus on a few key platforms brilliantly than them all half-heartedly.