A Welsh wonderland

We are standing next to a lake, in a wood, in north Wales. The trees are thick and green and many. They are pinned between a sea on one side and mountains on the other. Civilisation feels a long way from here. The nearest big city is four hours by train. It’s across the border, in England.

And on this lake, in this wood, in this place that feels like the middle of nowhere, we are looking at a floating dance floor. And on this dance floor there are dozens of people going absolutely crazy.

They’re shaking their hair and their arms and their hips to music blasting from huge speakers strategically located within the trees. In an improvised DJ booth made of wood and reclaimed materials a minister of sound is pogoing along, one hand holding a plastic cup, the other jabbing repeatedly into the air. A queue snakes from a makeshift refreshments stand.

‘Get on there with them,’ shouts a guy in a neon yellow T-shirt above the drum and bass, pointing at a floating bridge leading to said stage. ‘We’re having it large!’

It is 3pm in the afternoon.

We have come, me and her, into these woods looking for wildlife and now I want to put on my David Attenborough voice and talk about how we are witnessing the lesser-spotted afternoon-raver. But I don’t. I thank our invitee, shrug, and join that queue.

Well, why not? This, after all, is the weird world of Wales’ annual Festival Number 6. And, as we are fast discovering, it is every bit as crazy as it is brilliant…

Let’s rewind to the start. Which is either Thursday night or the year 1925 depending on how you look at it. Thursday is when we arrive in Portmeirion, the tiny Welsh coastal village where Festival Number 6 is held each year. It is the night before this three-day feast of left-field music, alternative literature, gourmet food and Grace Jones doing hula hoops in front of 10,000 people starts. It is when we pitch our tent and hope the rain stays out in the Irish Sea – which it does. But if you really want to appreciate what makes this colourful carnival of culture different from your average Glastonbury, you need to travel back a little further in time. Ninety years to be exact.

It was then, in 1925, that the eccentric architect Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis bought a piece of land in Gwynedd, on the estuary of the River Dwyryd, and started to construct a fairytale village.

Portmeirion – a Disneyland-like mismatch of timeless, technicolour buildings – is the jaw-dropping result. Here, domed halls, Rapunzel towers, Italianate villas and a Greek-style colonnade sit side by side on winding medievalist lanes and Jacobite promenades. There is an open-air pool that looks out to sea, a central piazza complete with sub-tropical garden, and a Romanesque pantheon overlooking the village centre. A Grade 1 listed hotel nestles at the bottom. A Victorian castellated mansion sits atop. In between, there is barely a nook or cranny that doesn’t offer some architectural joy.

On the three sides of the village not bordered by the sea, it is surrounded by the woodland. Beyond that, epic on the horizon, is the Snowdonia mountain range. The resulting impression means that Portmeirion is regularly called the most beautiful village in Britain. Perhaps more often, it is called the most bizarre. In truth, it may be both.

Walking through is to feel like you’ve stepped into a Brothers Grimm story. Portmeirion is a place where houses could be made of gingerbread, princesses may be behind every door and wolves dressed as grandmas never seem far away.

On the Thursday we arrive, it is difficult to describe the effect all this has. Ten thousand people are slowly turning up for the festival, which begins the next day. Many have already had their senses knocked for six by a train journey, on Arriva Trains Wales, which takes in some of Europe’s most stunning scenery. Now, they’ve found themselves here, in a place plucked straight from the imagination of Hans Christian Andersen. Rarely will one witness so much wonder on the face of so many. ‘I thought,’ says Pat Lewis, a business analyst up from London for the weekend, ‘places like this only existed in Game Of Thrones or something.’

Portmeirion is worth a visit any time of the year. Certainly, artists and aristocrats have always thought so. Noël Coward wrote his comedy Blithe Spirit here. George Harrison chose it as the venue for his 50th birthday party. In earlier decades, Ingrid Bergman, Bertrand Russell and Edward Prince of Wales all holidayed in the village. Perhaps most famously, it provided the setting for the 1967 cult UK spy and sci-fi series The Prisoner.

In winter, it apparently shimmers with the sea. In the summer, it sparkles. Some 250,000 people come here annually. They stay at the gloriously opulent Castell Deudraeth hotel; eat in the homely Caffi Glas Italian restaurant; and explore the 70-acre Gwyllt woodland, as well as North Wales beyond.

But it is Festival Number 6 that is the real highlight of the calendar. For these three days of high art and high jinks people travel from across Europe, Asia and America.

‘Clough did not like the idea of Portmeirion being a sterile museum of architecture,’ said Robin Llywelyn, managing director of the Clough Williams-Ellis Foundation, earlier this year. ‘He wanted the place to inspire people to be creative in their own right, be that as artists, writers, poets, musicians, even architects… He wanted Portmeirion to be a place for things to happen, where events might take place, to be a setting.’

That this has come to fruition with the festival – run since 2012 – there can be no doubt of. The carnival leaves no corner of this remarkable village untouched. Entire buildings, streets, fields, beaches and, yes, woodland lakes, are turned into stages for music, comedy and discussion.

Street theatre and parades dominate the roads; food stalls selling everything from oysters to fishfinger sandwiches take over the pavements. Portmeirion is, for this one weekend more even than any other, a sort of adult wonderland.

The performance highlights come thick and fast too. The comedian Steve Coogan – best known for his Oscar-nominated film Philomena and his own comedy creation Alan Partridge – gives a well-received talk in the central plaza. Scottish-born and US-based Author Irvine Welsh speaks about his latest book in a garden overlooking the beach. The 60-strong Brythoniaid Welsh Male Voice Choir take over the Town Hall.

The English rock band British Sea Power are absolutely magnificent – all huge songs and minute detail – during a performance on the park’s second, tent-ed stage; while another British outfit, Slow Club, are a wonderful welcome to the whole shebang on the Friday afternoon. When lead singer Rebecca Taylor sees one young man in the crowd climbing on the shoulders of another, she offers some advice: ‘go easy, son – it’s a long weekend.

Long, yes. But it flies by. Every second and minute here feels like a delicious assault on the senses. If you’re not hearing or seeing something worth your time, you’re smelling it. Proof of point? The same day we stumble on that rave in the woods, we clamber down the cliffs to the beach. Tucked away there, out of sight, under canvas, is a pop-up restaurant doing a fine line in Welsh lamb, glazed rarebit and cured salmon. It smells delicious. Apparently chef Aiden Byrne from the legendary Manchester House restaurant is at the stove. Unfortunately, we’re too late to eat. It’s all booked up. Not even saying we’re from Friday can get us into this tent. We walk back to the village instead. Along the way we find visitors trying another unusual festival activity: they’re taking to the sea for late evening paddle-board lessons.

‘It beats the yoga field at Glastonbury,’ we hear one of them shout. And that might just be the point. This is a festival, yes. But it’s more than that. Portmeirion is a travel adventure all in its own right. It’s a fantasia land for adults.

As we’re packing up our tent on the Monday, I remember more words from Robin Llywelyn. He said how Sir Clough Williams-Ellis had wanted his village to ‘provide pleasure and make people happy’.

It’s a job well done.