Rock Music Festival Survival Guide
How To Pack for the Weather, Chaos and Loos of a Major Rock Festival
Music festivals can be as much a trial as a weekend of fun for the unprepared. Follow this festival survival guide to return with health and sanity intact.
With the European festival season almost here once more, hundreds of thousands of revellers will be preparing to live under canvas for several days on a steady diet of beer, chips and mud. Here's how to survive it all.
Keep Track of Your Mates
Mobile phones are a godsend but coverage may be patchy and there may also be times when networks are swamped by the sheer amount of users all trying to meet up with their lost friends too. It's always worth arranging your own meet-up spot early on but don't make it the main stage mixing desk – unless you're actually attempting to ditch those so-called mates.
Pack for the Weather
Depending where you are this might involve bikinis and shorts or wellies, pac-a-macs and a small inflatable canoe; sometimes all in a single day if you happen to be at Glastonbury. Sun cream is an essential, as are changes of footwear, spare socks and at least one towel.
Festival Crime
Unless you've lost all your friends (see above) try not to go wandering off alone, especially at night. Although rare, assaults, muggings and rapes have all occurred at festivals in recent years so take reasonable precautions and buddy up. Theft is a far more common occurrence so never leave valuables in your tent and if you must pass out in a field (see: Alcohol), try not to do so with an unattended bag at your side.
Braving the Festival Toilets
If it's relatively easy to get offsite it might be worth clenching until you can reach some proper facilities but bear in mind that 8,000 other people might have had the same idea. At some point you're going to have to use the festival toilets and the only advice is to hold your breath and don't look down. Oh, and take your own loo rolls – by day 3 of a festival they'll be worth their weight in platinum.
Drinking at Festivals
Getting wrecked as soon as you hit the campsite might sound like fun but unless you want to spend your favourite band's set face down in a patch of mud you should consider pacing yourself. Dehydration can also be a serious problem and if you are drinking you should alternate with water and/or soft drinks.
Festivals and Drugs
The best and most sensible advice is simply: don't. It is however a fact of life that people will take drugs at festivals, but here are a few things to bear in mind. The laws of the land still apply at festivals and if you're caught with illicit substances you might find yourself ejected from the site and/or arrested. Drug dealers - never the most socially conscious of folk at the best of times – tend to be even less particular at festivals and what you think you're buying might not be what you get. And finally, festivals – chaotic, crowded and potentially dangerous – are not good places for the inexperienced to experiment with drugs.
Take Condoms
Because you never know your luck. If you're going to play, play safely.
Click here for the alternative UK festival guide.
