Festival camping: find out the pros and cons

Many campers get their first taste of camping when they go to a music festival like Glastonbury. Thousands attend these events each year, bringing basic camping gear with them. Many camping outlets now produce and sell specialized camping packs for music festivals consisting of a two-person tent, two sleeping bags, two camping mats with a lantern, and a stove.

You often have this view that camping at a festival means having a hard time without washing. In part this is true; A surprising fact is that many of the people who camp at a music festival actually leave all their camping gear in the mud when it’s time to go home. I think this is due to the sudden rush when it’s over, people just want to leave as fast as possible.

Another big problem at music festivals is crime, most commonly theft. Many times I have friends who tell me that after watching their favorite act they have returned to their tent and it has been kidnapped by some unscrupulous person or the content has been removed in its entirety. What has become very popular now is Day-Glo paint to personalize your tent and make it stand out from hundreds and even thousands of other tents. There are even tent providers in the UK who offer a tent package where you can paint your own tent, it may seem like a novel idea but it has serious use.

You have to take precautions when camping at festivals; it can give you the camping bug or shut you down for life. Never leave anything of value in your store, if a large group of you are going and you all have different tastes in music, try to organize a rotation. So if half want to go and see an act, the other half stay in the tent until they come back and vice versa.

There are other options besides camping at the festival, you can stay at a local bed and breakfast if camping isn’t your thing, but camping at the festival is hands down the cheapest way to stay at one of these music events and for me it just adds to the overall experience. Glastonbury and the other big festivals have experienced a high crime rate in the last ten years. Due to their increasing popularity the police presence has also increased so I think they are a safer environment now. For example, one of my friends takes her young children to Glastonbury every year and swears it’s a great place to take her family. A little different from all the horror stories that used to appear in the tabloids about drugs and persistent theft.