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 Topic: Festival Camping Tips Please
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22/6/2012 at 6:57pm
Location: leigh
Outfit: vango diablo 900 Vango Icarus 500
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Joined: 15/9/2004 Gold Member 
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This is ''Katluce's'' daughter.
Download was wet.
It was sunny driving down, but the minute we got to the place where you get your wristbands, oh did the heavens open.
We had a 45 minute walk through ''The Village'' to find a spot. We were turned away from two fields due to them being full and had to park next to one of the roads in the far corners.
Everyone knows setting up a tent in the rain is no fun, so we had to pop up one of the tents and throw all the bags in and set up a gazebo. 8 lads all trying to read wet instructions has to be one of the funniest thing I've ever seen. It rained for the rest of the night.
One of the lads had to walk to the toilets and instead of queuing, came back with burgers for us all and just had a wee behind my tent, on the plus side we all got that drunk we all slept like babies. :D
Day two consisted of drinking and helping people up who had fallen in the mud, mainly me. The mud came over my wellies. :( We'd also heard rumors that they were planning on evacuating all Download campers and giving refunds. One of my friends was a sound engineer working at Download, so if he heard anything, our camp would be the first to know. We were told just to sit tight for one more night and he'll ask around.
Day three was when Prodigy played, by this time, I'd rang everyone to see if they'd come get me. We'd been told all the acts had a 3 hour delay due to the wind, I'm guessing it was all due to health and safety. So by this time I was seriously sick of the weather, the mud, and considering missing Prodigy to stay warm. All my clothes were wet and muddy and sitting in my tent with a wordsearch was looking like a brill idea!
That night, I've never been so scared, knowing I'd not pegged my outer layer on my tent down, it was just hooked on and with the wind as strong as it was, I was convinced that it was going to blow off. Silly me...
Day four Metallica played, that was our first day where the weather was off and on but the wind was still there. I've never known an entire campsite scream and cheer at 7am just because the sun came out, I seriously could have cried, there were no words to describe our happiness. But like I said, the wind was still strong, even took out gazebo and lifted it easy 10ft in the air and launched it 40ft away from out camp over everyone's tents. I've never had to run after a gazebo before... So then, all 9 tents were pegged down with 9inch pegs that we had to borrow from one of the lads, as was the gazebo.
Finally day five, was when Sabbath played and it was absolutely cracking t'flags, well for like three hours, but there was no rain, that's the main thing. I fell asleep in the sun and burnt my face to a crisp aha, everybody's clothes dried out, tents were dry, it was amazing and there are no words to explain how good Sabbath were.
All in all, Download was amazing, nothing was robbed and the toilet situation was... okay...
Roll on next year! :D
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04/7/2012 at 10:40am
Location: Newcastle
Outfit: Jack Wolfskin Great Plains III
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Well, for me, the bands were excellent but the organisation wasn't.
- Not enough toilets (glad I took a pack of Traveljohns)
- No contingency plan for the adverse weather (even though the weather forecast was poor). No straw put down until the Saturday, even though it had been persisting it down since the Wednesday
- Poor choice of expensive food and drink
- Inconsistent bag searches on entering the arena (some people were having empty pop bottles confiscated, others were being allowed in with half-full ones).
- Lads camped beside had their tents robbed by the security!
- No stewards or signage in the car parks so when you eventually found your car, you didn't know which way the exit was!
- No shuttle buses running between the village and the car parks Friday afternoon or at all on Saturday. Tried to get to the car on Friday lunchtime only to be confronted with a logjam of people trying to get to the campsites in one direction, and into the arena in the other direction - utter chaos!
...and this was just what I experienced! Others complained (on the official forums) of being sent from pillar to post the in the rain on the Wednesday trying find a camping spot. Not helped by the fact the festival offered £10 upgrades for a full weekend camping, but failed to amend their licence to have more camping fields open - clever! Barbecues (were they allowed or not?), the distance from family and disabled fields to the arena... I could go on.
It seemed to me that it was a blatant money making exercise while trimming the infrastructure. I know festivals have to make some money, but this was blatant profiteering.
I enjoyed hanging-out in the village and the music was top notch (Metalica, Sabbath, Steel Panther, Seb Bach, Slash, Tenacious D) but other than Glastonbury, I'm sticking with smaller festivals from now on. It's not me age, I just don't appreciate being ripped-off.
(Oops! Didn't mean to make such a long post - apologies!)
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...after all an awning is just a three-sided tent!
Festival veteran.
Owner of too many tents!
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