Review: Between The Trees Festival – Mischievous fun in a Welsh woodland

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Pierre Donahue

After a long, hot, scorching summer, a weekend in a beautiful, shady woodland seemed like just the tonic. However, Mother Nature had the last laugh, and buckets of the elusive Welsh rain came pouring down on festival-goers at Between The Trees. It may have been rather damp, but it certainly didn’t dampen our spirits.

This was my fourth time at the festival, hidden away on the Merthyr Mawr Estate near Bridgend. For me, and many others, it has become something of an annual pilgrimage. Voted the UK’s Best Micro Festival in 2025, it’s no secret among those in the know just how special this place is. A small festival with a very big heart.

Part of its charm is undoubtedly the setting. The majority of the festival site is, quite literally, between the trees. It’s no surprise, then, that this is an event that places such a heavy emphasis on nature. One of its stated aims is to reconnect people with the natural world, and that ethos runs through almost everything that happens here.

It’s therefore much more than just a music festival. It’s an encounter with nature — a chance to slow down, breathe in the woodland air, and spend a few days surrounded by trees, music and like-minded people.

So what happens when a festival is built around the landscape rather than simply placed within it? In my experience – pure magic.

The first thing that strikes you is that there is no phone signal. Initially, this is a little disconcerting in a modern world obsessed with connectivity, but that feeling soon gives way to something rather liberating: the sense of being fully present in the moment. No scrolling, no notifications, no temptation to check what’s happening elsewhere. You’re here, in the woods, and that’s where your attention stays.

Whilst there are plenty of aspects to the line-up that aren’t centred around music, including workshops on tool making, foraging and literature, music is most definitely a big part of the proceedings. And folk music takes centre stage, with bagpipes in particular making their presence felt. In fact, if you’re not a fan of the pipes, perhaps this probably isn’t for you.

For me, the first act of my weekend was Elias Alexander. Now, I love those pipes and thought I’d seen every type of bagpipe show, but that was until I encountered the American multi-instrumentalist from Oregon on Friday. Dressed in a somewhat outrageous, brightly coloured floral suit, Elias blends guitar, fiddle, bagpipes, small pipes, whistles and vocals with electronic loops and pounding dance beats.

He was introduced as a ‘one-man party’, but what followed was more akin to a one-man musical tornado. Leaping from instrument to instrument and soon jumping into the crowd, Elias had us firmly in the palm of his hand. It was impossible not to be swept up in the sheer energy of it all.

Friday night headliners Valtos were next, following a triumphant appearance in 2023. The innovative Scottish duo hail from the Isle of Skye and have created a unique, genre-bending fusion of Gaelic folk with classic house, trance and heavy bass. After announcing that it had taken them close to 12 hours to drive down, they soon turned the Forest Stage arena, surrounded by colourfully lit trees, into a sea of sweaty dancing bodies. A suitably raucous way to end the day.

Brollies and anoraks were at the ready as Saturday rolled around. Celtic folk band Juniper kicked off proceedings, with the Birmingham-based group seamlessly shifting from massive, driving, orchestral walls of sound to delicate, intimate, stripped-back acoustic moments. I hadn’t heard of them before, and really enjoyed what I saw of their set.

An annual tradition at Between The Trees is when the entire festival takes a pause on Saturday for Ballet Cymru to enchant us all with a dusk performance. Looking out over the packed woodland arena, with the lights and trees, is a bit like stumbling across a secret celebration of elves and hobbits. Or at least that’s what I’d imagine it would look like.

But perhaps that’s just my imagination running wild after too many pints of Horny Goat Ale from Bragdy Twt Lol Brewery — which, translated into English, means ‘mischievous fun bordering on nonsense’.

The next morning, that phrase seemed rather apt. I had a strange dream I’d stayed up half the night dancing with hobbits that looked a lot like Elias Alexander. In fact, it turns out it wasn’t a dream at all. Elias had played a triumphant late-night club set on the Niche Stage, where he did something I’ve never seen before: crowd-surfed whilst playing bagpipes! Perhaps he was on the Horny Goat too.

For myself, and anyone else who had stayed up well past their bedtime, Sunday was a bit of a struggle. But the joy of this festival is that it’s also perfectly fine to plonk yourself down on a camp chair and just soak in the atmosphere.

Thus the scene was perfectly set for my favourite act on this year’s bill, Mishra, to bliss us out too. The global folk collective, based in Sheffield, weave together British folk with North Indian classical influences and are quite simply a delight for the senses.

It was all going so well, until that mischievous rain unleashed another tremendous downpour that had us all running for cover. I felt so sorry for Mishra, but it didn’t stop them. As we all peered out from behind tarps and under hoods, they continued. Their set ended with myself and many others at the front. Squelchy sandals but warm smiles.

Scotland and England are well represented here, but this is very much a Welsh festival too, with Sunday seeing two of Wales’ best take the stage. Bwncath, from Caernarfon, are an acclaimed Welsh-language band and, whilst I don’t speak Welsh, I thought their upbeat indie rock was the perfect choice for some tired and rather damp bodies such as mine.

As we approached the end of the weekend, Newport’s folk-rock stalwarts Rusty Shackle took things up a notch and soon had us all fist-pumping to a song about the famous Newport Rising of 1839, when John Frost and 4,000 Chartists fought for democratic representation and the right to vote.

By this point I was a happy but exhausted camper and retreated to bed. But, having drifted off, I was awoken by the sound of Scotland’s folk-rock headliners Skerryvore. Pulling my waterproof kagool over my pajamas, I ran out and caught the last soaring song, ‘Take My Hand’, from their 2018 album Evo. Their energy was infectious. The line “Take my hand, and we’ll go dancing. Underneath the stars’ felt like the perfect way to end another special weekend.

This festival is a gem. For a few days, the outside world seems a very long way away. That, perhaps, is the real magic of Between The Trees. See you between them next year.

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