Content Warning: Mention of injury
Growing up in the North-East, it was a rite of passage to attend at least one Leeds festival upon coming of age. Like a debutante ball, but… with a lot less cordiality. It was built up to be the best weekend of your life. It was freedom.
But in reality, a bunch of bairns in a field, limited consequences, no survival skills, shower or structure… it really was a recipe for disaster. The realities of festival-living are intense, and looking back on my time at Leeds fest (my first festival), I'm astounded we actually made it out alive.
Picture this: You're fresh out of exams, the sun is shining, and the final weekend of August is approaching. You've been waiting for it all year… August bank holiday weekend: Leeds Festival. After months of being burdened by school, my mates and I were ready to let loose at Leeds. We planned everything: from the sleeping arrangements to the outfits.
It all started off so smoothly. We prepared for the 2 hour car journey it took for us to get down there, singing along to the tracks of Bastille, Dave, Arctic Monkeys, and many more. We did the mandatory pit-stop at Wetherby Services, filing in amongst the excited crowds of other festival-goers. Finally, we indulged in the final, real meal we were going to have until the following week, like it was the last supper.
Back in the car, we eventually arrived at Bramham Park. We jumped out onto the grass with great enthusiasm, now clearly amongst many other, festival-first timers. Backpacks were poorly packed, half open, and bigger than ourselves, throwing us all off balance.
Where we saw excitement, my dad inevitably saw danger. Our beaming smiles remained shining with the grave concern on his face, as he looked around the rowdy crowd we'd be spending our weekend with. There was no going back now; it was official, we'd bought the tickets, he'd driven us down, it was time for him to wave his little girl and her two childhood best friends goodbye. How naïve, we had no idea what we were in for.
So off we went, embarking on a long route to the campsite. It felt like we were the three musketeers, embarking on our much-anticipated adventure. But as we walked further down that long dusty road (have I mentioned how long it was?) our spirits were already tainted. The length, and excessive weight on our backs, was proving to be more physically demanding than we’d expected. My friend’s mam had packed for her, and she was bewildered at the weight of a particular bag. What on earth had she packed? Fed up, she chucked it aside in the bush, deciding it wasn't important.
Finally, after what had felt like a century we reached camp. As we wandered through tents, we saw people laughing and joking whilst setting up their camps. Through crowds, food stalls and fun-fair rides, we absorbed the noise, smells and joy creating an ecstatic atmosphere. As the twister called 'scream if you wanna go faster', our spirits were quickly returning.
Eventually we found our mates who’d already parked base in Blue Camp. Tent settled and bearings found, we were parched. After all the walking, bag-carrying and orientation, we needed rejuvenating. We needed a drink. We turned to the two others, expecting the alcohol that they'd promised to bring with them and get through security, but there was a moment of silence. To our dismay, they had forgotten it. Fuming. What were they thinking?
I stood up and looked longingly upon our surrounding camps, sat drinking from their collections of bottles and cans. My friend rang her mam in despair hoping to get some sympathy… but it only made things worse. Remember that bag she chucked? Fed-up by its weight? Take your guess about what had caused that excessive load... Yep, Abbey's gem of a mam had kindly supplied us with 1 litre of Smirnoff vodka. Now lost, long gone, in the bushes somewhere at the beginning of that long dusty road. I think we sat there in silence for a good half an hour, our spirits hitting what we thought would be rock bottom.
Little did we know this was just the beginning of our troubles. That evening, upon trying to fall asleep, we discovered that the churros van that we'd hitched our tent next to was ran by hardcore ravers. Boom, boom, boom, relentlessly pounding out hardcore dance tracks. All. Night. Long. Not the most peaceful lullaby.
So sleep we did not. The raving churros van had us awake and lying mindlessly in our tents for hours on end with its non-stop motive. We hadn’t even seen any acts yet and we were physically drained, bickering about alcohol, and now sleep-deprived from the active churros van.
If we didn’t think it could get any worse, the next day, one of my friends fainted at a headliner. Overwhelmed by heat, bodies and movement, she started falling and had to be pulled over the barriers. Classic. Of course there’s always one.
Later that night we were back mindlessly laying in our tents, the churros van still relentlessly pounding... boom, boom, boom when it was suddenly interrupted by the crushing bodyweight of a grown man falling down upon our heads. It was gone as quickly as it had come, and we all slowly rose from our slumber in unison, as if we were aligned by some sort of higher power. We were like corpses sitting up in coffins, turning to look at each other in complete silence, speechless and slightly bewildered by what had just happened.
Then we all burst out laughing, at the state of ourselves and the weekend we were having. With our tent now half caved in, and my mates glasses pulled half from her face, we definitely looked worse for wear.
As the sun rose on the Sunday morning, somehow still alive after nearly being crushed, we went to the stages first thing. We were big Arctic Monkey’s fans, and were desperate to get barrier. So what did we do? 8 hours. We stood for 8 hours and lowered ourselves to wild weeing just for Alex Turner to turn up and perform a low-energy, half-arsed set.
By midday Sunday though we knew we'd had enough. Broken and beaten, I’d frantically messaging my dad to come and pick us up a night earlier, rationing my final bars of phone battery. So once Arctic Monkeys had managed to finish their set, we headed straight to camp to collect our things.
Who actually enjoys festival living?
And it's a good job we did. By some sort of miracle we left before the infamous, purge-like fires of that Sunday night began. Those bright tents all up in flames like a scene from hell. Some guardian angel must have been looking down on us.
So fed up and ready to leave, we left camp at least 30 mins earlier than my dad was going to arrive. Thinking we’d made it out of the hell-hole, we then had to sit shivering in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, waiting for my dad.
With my 1% left I’d message him, turn off the phone. Message. Turn off. Just hoping and praying my phone wouldn’t give up, and that he’d be able to find us.
By yet another miracle, he did, but our troubles were in no way over. The icing on the cake was now navigating the winding roads of the Leeds countryside in the pitch black, dragging our tents along the floor, defeated, and in complete silence. My dad parked in the most rogue location, 30 minutes walking distance from our pick-up point due to road closures. I recall quietly crying to myself at this point, completely helpless.
It was once I was home when I realised just how dirty I was too. Over the weekend, living in a field with no shower, in utter squalor, I'd gradually accumulated a second-skin of dirt. At first I gaslit myself into thinking it was tan, but no. As I stepped into the first shower I’d had in almost a week, I could see the dirt coming off me.
Festivals sound great… a non-stop, party weekend full of your favourite artists? Say less. But from our experience, we also quickly learned that festival-living has it’s downsides. The physical demand, camp conflicts, drink culture, danger, and lack of hygiene that arose during my time at Leeds Fest all evoke the question… who actually enjoys festival living?
Because my experience only highlights a few of the many possible downsides. Our experience was just one amongst many, and definitely on the tamer side compared to others.
One mate remembers layering up her PJ's, daytime clothes, sleeping bag and blanket, whilst balling her eyes out cause of how cold she was. "I genuinely thought I was going to die" she told me. I don’t blame her. I also recall dropping £30 for a duvet that year.
Another mate remembers weeing in a super noodles pot because she couldn't be bothered to make the trek to the portaloos. To be honest, this sounds like the preferable option over facing the dreaded stench of a festival portaloo anyway.
She also splatted one of these pots on top of another girls head (I’m hoping for her sake it wasn't the toilet alternative), and remembers passing out, perhaps a bit too intoxicated, on one of the fair-ground rides.
To top it all off, in the early hours of the morning at the relentless stage, she also remembers a gazebo falling upon her head after it had been thrown in the air.
But this was nothing compared to another girl, who actually got glassed at the Sam Fender gig. Someone had recklessly thrown their bottle into the sky, and it had crash-landed on the side of her head. She came away with a very, very, very bloody wound. I received a few 'Geordie Scum' heckles whilst trying to get hot water for my quaker oats, but at least I came away with my head still intact..
2023 Headliner and North-East legend Sam Fender even recalls his experience at Leeds Festival as a teenager: 'me and Deano spent the entire week launching hot dogs out of a gazebo pole at random crowds of lads chanting ‘Yorkshire Yorkshire’., 'One night I was out cold in my tent' which 'got set alight - some fine young hero from Sheffield p*ssed out the fire to save me'
Cold, dirty, unhinged. The way people behave and live during a festival is beyond normal. Again, it begs the question… who actually enjoys festival living?
It’s certainly not comfortable, nor lavish. It’s brutal, challenging and intense. Especially at Leeds Fest. But at the same time, all of us who've completed this rite of passage, have come away with one-of-a-kind memories that we couldn't have gotten elsewhere.
In our modern world of risk-assessments, damage-control, and order, festivals are a rare opportunity to abandon all forms of social organisation and quite literally let loose in a field.
And that's not an endorsement of anti-social behaviour. We all still have a collective responsibility towards ourselves, each other and the environment. But festivals can be celebrated as providing a space of complete and utter freedom. Spaces of endless possibilities. Spaces where all forms of social decorum and cordiality are eradicated and people can be shamelessly… human.
I think there's something special about that. If you can embrace that chaos... then I think you can enjoy festival-living. Going wild in the wilderness is all part of what makes festivals so fun and endearing. I mean, come on, where else could you expect grown men, gazebos and glass bottles to fall from the sky?