Tell us your festival travel nightmares

wavevader
wrote on Thursday 12 July :
Travelling down to Glastonbury for our first festival staying in the luxury of our new (to us) VW transporter camper, Mrs 'vader and I were too excited to acknowledge the strong smell of petrol emanating from within the guts of Daisy. However, after pulling in to the services and noticing a trail of fuel spilling from fuel tank our spirits dwindled and we accepted the certainty of having to ring the AA. Four hours in Reading Services and by a tow back to london followed, plus the further expense of last minute trains the next day made it our most expensive journey to a festival yet. Two more trips back to the garage and Daisy was back on ebay.

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sjenner
wrote on Thursday 12 July :
It was Glasto '98... Charitable old me thought it would be a nice idea to borrow my mum's semi-abandoned old Volvo Estate to drive our group down to the fest, but... - It first broke down on the way from her house to mine, on the M6 motorway the weekend before Glasto - After setting off for Glasto, the brakes failed before I'd even left London, on the Chiswick roundabout, causing me to crash the old tank into a tourist's hire car. We were then towed all the way to Glasto by the Green Flag recovery people. - The car was put into a local garage to be fixed, ready for our return home from Glasto on the Monday. - As it happened, we were ready to leave a great deal earlier than Monday. Especially when my girlfriend slipped and fractured her ankle (and the emergency services took her off site to fix her up and then returned her back to her soaking tent). So effectively we were stranded in the cold, wet mud for a few days, waiting for the car to be repaired. - Finally, the car was ready and we set off back to London from Glasto. - On the M3, the brakes failed again and we had to be towed all the way home. It wasn't one of my more enjoyable festival experiences. Luckily we all survived, as - amazingly - did my relationship with said girlfriend for a few more years.

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Rimbaud
wrote on Thursday 12 July :
Mud clad and psychotically exhausted I left Glastonbury for a five hour drive back to London. Dropped off at I went on a wander to find Clapham Junction. Stumbling upon Clapham High Street and an early morning passing train I ran, with tent and bag, aboard a train going to Wandsworth. Stepping off at Wandsworth it all seemed unfamiliar - it was Wandsworth Road rather then Wandsworth town I required. After standing on a Victoria commuter train I finally got to Clapham where I then shared a platform full with annoyed workers because vandalism meant the train wasn’t passing theirs, or my, stops. I finally fell into my flat after eight hours of travelling and three hours of rubbing wet mud against disgruntled workers – Glastonbury’s ace!

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stopbeingahorse
wrote on Thursday 12 July :
Me and some mates went to Download in a van and our exhaust fell off as we came off the slip to the festival. I tied it up with a guy rope but as we moved off it snapped and ripped out the fuel lines. We eventually got towed to the festival and cos i'd ripped out the fuel lines the AA qualified that as two problems so we got a lift home Monday morning as well - best journey home, nightmare getting there!

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Soca98
wrote on Wednesday 25 July :
My friend the sensible one, decided to leave Glasto on the Monday, I thought "ahh wouldn't it be nice to camp for one more day". It wasn't! Glastonbury suddenly turns rather macabre over those last two days; all the tents and shiny stalls start shutting down, the fence jumpers arrive, and everyone wears a slighlty glumover expression. My friend also had the car... Cue 3 hrs of walking down the road as we couldn't get a bus, then finally getting a ride with a pleasant hippy lady to some backwater train station. All with a splitting headache from some serious cider love in the night before! Luckily we had a house in Bristol, the only place we could get to, so somehow stumbled there and flopped out, dead to the world. Remember; leave a festival while its still going strong, not when its breathing its last breath.

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bestmusic
wrote on Wednesday 1 August :
Peninsula 2007 Targu Mures: See photos and videos here: http://www.bestmusic.ro/Interviu_Video_Peninsula_2007_69.html

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mikey_ruben
wrote on Monday 27 August :
TICKET SCAM WARNING londonticketshop.co.uk London Ticket Shop READ THIS BEFORE YOU BUY YOUR TICKET AND SAVE YOURSELF GRIEF To find out more visit: http://www.londonticketshop.info

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sanatogen
wrote on Monday 3 September :
RetroFest 2007 Experience Apart from the setting for the event and the logistics of getting there and back from home it was a great day out. It was surprisingly easy to get close to the stage. Buy a couple of chairs and sit on the sidelines. First up were Kajagoogoo who were really good and should have been second last act behind human league. Their front man shows exactly how it should be done. Imagination had a tough 30 minutes to fill on his own, but he pulled it off smoothly even when the rain started really coming down. The Blockheads put on some songs "from the vaults" as the old beardie from south london said. Phil Jupitus pulled it off very well leading the group for part of the act as Amy winehouse. He could've easily filled in for Suggs as well! Bananarama were having a laugh and made no apologies for it! Nice to hear them run off the hits. Go West grabbed the nestle afterwards and got everyone going once again. No messing about talking to anyone or pauses, they got down to it after a couple of taps to the beat. Fantastic! A tear to my eye. ABC Front man Martin Fry has a great voice and made it look easy being on stage along with his cheeky grin. Good to finally see Tony Hadley (after hearing about his performance at Magaluf). Good voice and great finish with "Gold" The crowd enjoyed Howard Jones as he reeled off hit after hit and seemed very comfortable on stage performing and chatting to the audience. I would have put him at the start of the show to kick things off. And of course.......at the top of the pile the Human League. Phillip Oakey Stood at the middle of the stage on the first hit almost as if he knew he was "the dog's chops". Great set! I think one of the other band members must have made a comment to him about the pitch cos it didnt sound right at first. It all brought back pleasant memories I hadnt pondered for decades. for me that was entirely unexpected bonus. And Here's where it went downhill..... We decided to head off two songs before the end. I reluctantly walked away to catch Milligans *pre-booked* coach back to Ayr Station to connect with the last Glasgow Train. The first bus had already gone so we were near the front of the queue for the next bus. It turned out there had been an accident , which was blocking the other buses. But the real blockage was the organisers allowing private vehicles to park in Castle grounds. By allowing this to happen, bigger vehicles had a tough time getting in and out. And when you have 500+ folk wanting to leave the area all at once, it's a nightmare. The second bus arrived, loaded up and promptly departed.....and then got stuck in the muddy ground, again this was due to trying to avoid the private vehicles parked on one side of the road. We all got off and then after a few pushes the bus was mobile once again. The next problem was Trains. The Driver thought the security at the Castle grounds had asked the Train to wait for us. One of the passengers had phoned one of their gfriends who had got on the first bus, they said they were on the train and it had left the station. Immediately the passenger asked the driver what will happen next (Poor Driver!) Another passenger near the front of them was wailing "I predict riots!" We got to our stop and decided not to bother waiting, it was either prestwick airport (on the off chance of a shuttle bus), or a hotel. We got the last room at the Station hotel. All freshened up, an ok breakfast and we were on the express back to Glasgow. Whew! Ok, some other stuff to get off chest. Annoying depressing acoustic music played between acts on first two hours of festival. Get some 80s music pumped out to get everyone in the mood! No way was I paying £1 for curry sauce on my chips. Bring your own in future. It wasnt the best field for the event, since it had lots of inclines. Some "interesting" safety features used by some of the carnival rides to accomodate this. Why oh why pick a topsy turvy field? ** And where was Culzean Castle? It would be in close proximity and clearly in view as part of setting the scene for the festival ** If I hear of another event at Culzean castle....no thanks!!! Milligans buses? They're like being inside of a sardine tin, and according to one customer they left 100 people at that station who had to get taxis to the festival! This is Retrofest....what percentage of the audience do you think will be camping at the so called "Tangerine fields". Poor lighting for nighttime trek back to bus, although it was great if you wanted to retire to the darkness for a number two. And thanks to Ayr Station ScotRail staff for being so accomodating. One of the attendants said "Last train at 11pm just like every other night" . We appeared the next day and explained our predicament to the clerk asking for our pre-booked tickets to be transferred to the Sunday. The clerk was indifferent to all of this so we had to pay for extra tickets at double the price we had bought them. This was pretty disappointing as it appeared as though Scotrail staff were blissfully unaware that a concert of Retrofest's Magnitude had taken place. No attempt was made as on the previous night (500+ people), or the following morning to accommodate any passengers delayed by the unforseen logistic problems of delayed connecting shuttle bus. Festival Organisers should really use this as a learning experience on how NOT TO provide travel services to and from the event. This is Retrofest....you can bet a large percentage of folk had families to get back to and jobs to turn up for the following day! All in all, we enjoyed the fresh air, food and the acts were great. It was the getting there and coming back that really stuck in the craw. We had been at Connect Festival the previous day at Inveraray Castle. They showed how an event should be created with variety of places to go, lovely castle scenery with convenient travel there and back.