How To Survive At A British Summer Festival
Created | Updated Nov 18, 2002
The music festival in Britain is a 30 year institution. Festival season is a time to let your hair down, put on some old clothes and a bin-liner and then sit in a muddy, rainy field and inhale second hand pot while listening to some great bands. The basic concept is simple: camping, drinking and chilling. There is, as with everything, a lot of ettiquette and useful information, especially for a first timer, that can save a lot of hassle.
Before you go
Preparation is the key. One does not need to pack much, but certain things are absolutely necessary.
The Tickets: No ticket, no festival. Most festivals sell both weekend passes and day passes, while some sell only one or another. Camping ones are almost certainly the better bet: cheaper than buying three singles, and also far more enjoyable, these sell out very fast. You will have to be planning months ahead to be able to get your grubby mitts on them. Day tickets should be the preserve of people who can only go one day out of the two or three, or who don't like having fun1. Typically, a weekend ticket will be in the region of £90-100, while each day ticket is about £40 each. Order them online early.
The Tent: The tent is good. The tent is your friend. You will sleep in the tent. Make sure it is distinctive and easily put up. Perhaps tie a pastic bag as a kind of flag to one of the poles so it can be recognised. Remember where it is and in which field. There will be many thousands of tents. Your write once lost himself for 2 and a half hours only 50 metres away from his tent in the dark.
The Backpack: Lightweight. Indistinct (undesirable). Not too big. It should have in it: a torch, a toothbrush, fresh underwear, a knife, a roll of black bin liners, plenty of toilet roll and as many soft drinks and as much booze as fits in the remaining space. Bring it all in cans, because bottles are confiscated at the gate. The bin liners are for rubbish, sitting on wet ground and for making into ponchos. The drink is because the cost of drink in the arena is horrendously overpriced. Don't bother with any other clothes, or shaving gear, or things that you mind being stolen.
Other things to remember: Plenty of money for merchandise and food - keep it safe (50 quid at the very least). Bring old clothes and shoes which you don't mind getting covered in mud. Leave your dignity at home. Make sure you take a dump before you go, because avoiding the toilets there is a critical thing.
When you get there - some tips
The site will be divided into several areas - the arena, in the middle, a great big armoured and walled carapace surrounded by guards and machine gun turrets and tank patrols. These are hard to get into without a ticket, trust me. Then there are the campsites and the rest of the stuff out of the arena, where there are some things to do usually, though not many.
Although it says that bands do not start until the early afternoon of the first day, it is a very good idea to turn up the night before to pitch your tent in a good place. This is also a good idea if you have to travel far, becuase you will arrive as the bands start and still have to set up camp, miles from the arena.
To get there, most people either drive or take a train. There is parking laid on, and it is usually either free, or will be included in a special ticket. The train will be full, but they will run a cheap shuttle service to the site on coaches if the organisers are any good at all.
Make sure you know where your tent is and can get to it. Try and pitch near recognisable landmarks2. Be as close to a toilet block as you dare, but never too close or too downwind. Try and get to a campsite near the arena because position is nine tenths of the law. There will be several campsites - some further away than others - so the early bird catches the prime tent position worm. Make sure your tent is recognisable too. It had better be certifiably waterproof as well, or Mr Trenchfoot will turn up to make your life a veritable misery...
Getting into the arena is actually very easy when you know how. When you don't, it's like spitting into a windtunnel. Basically, there is a building which exchanges tickets for various coloured wristbands which need to be presented at the gates of the arena. Just find this marked on the map and then turn up and queue (another thing to do when arriving the night before) and get your bracelet.
There are showers and stuff onsite. The unwritten law of the festival dictates that you stay unwashed and unshaved and covered in mud until you get back home. Do as they do. It's in the spirit of the thing.
There will be lots of food stores in and out of the arena. This will inevitably be of varying quality, but the prices will largely be comparable and vastly inflated. That, as they say, is life. One can get just about everything, though there is no garantuee of real quality. There will be crazy vegetarian foodstuffs and lumps of cooked meat to satisfy everyone's tastes.
There are also usually loads of 'alternative' and usually rubbish activities to get up to: lame funfairs, dodgy tattoo and piercing parlours, people selling poppers, people selling drugs (illegally, numbnuts), and all kinds of useless new age tat. Still, you pays your money and so on...
Drugs are usually fairly readily available, if you know where to look. If you like them, you'll prolly be able to find them yourself. If not, then it's no matter. People will come around and probably offer them to you anyway. Most festivals tend to take a dim view of drugs, so you have been warned.
Inside the arena
The central arena will have many large gates with turnstyles and queuing lanes. To get in, one needs to queue and then get the wristband checked by a steward. Once inside, we can get to the good stuff: the bands.
There is usually more than one stage - most decent festivals will have a huge line-up and so decisions will have to be made, some of which can be painful, especially when your two favourites are on at the same time3. This can't be helped: at least you get to see one of them.
To limit bands interfering with each others' sounds, stages are set a fair distance from each other, so timing is imperative.
Arriving late for a band, especially a popular one, will mean you have to stand a long way away - there may or may not be monitors, but being at the front in the moshpit is eminently superior. For your favourites, then, arrive early and get to the front.
Each day usually starts around midday and goes on til late evening. Seeing headliners can be an awesome experience, but your feet will be hurting if you've been standing up all day. This is where binliners come in - you can sit down in a field with a beer and listen to a chilled band from afar. Otherwise go back to the tent and have a sit down there. If you do not do this, your enjoyment of later bands will be compromised severely.
