This weekend saw me attending my final festival of the year; the notorious Leeds festival in England. Up until July, I had never been to a festival in my life although it had always been an ambition of mine to go to one and now I have successfully survived two!! This post is all about my adventures at the festival.

The muddy main stage

The three-day event took place in Bramham park and was home to around 75,000 festival-goers eager to see performances from artists including; Disclosure, Alt-J, Jake Bugg, System of a down, Foals and Chase and Status as well as the headlining acts; Eminem, Green Day and Biffy Clyro.

After arriving at around lunchtime on Friday to glorious sunshine, most of the campsites were already jam-packed, especially those nearest the arena! We had been pre-warned that the brown campsite was the quiet campsite and was ideal for families so we were reluctant to camp there – on top of this, it was also the furthest away which meant we would have to haul our heavy rucksacks and tent another mile- arghhh!! After much deliberation, we decided to settle in this campsite and this turned out to be a blessing for us as this was the campsite least affected by the mud. Also, if this was the quiet campsite god only knows what the other campsites must have been like – we were still being entertained by music and a guy playing guitar at 4am!

The brown campsite

The aftermath

Luckily, we missed the ‘biblical downpours’ of the Thursday night but in typical festival fashion, the heavens opened again on both the Friday and Saturday. Heavy downpours of torrential rain turned the campsite, arena and even backstage areas into a muddy lake. Even this was not enough to dampen the spirits of the excited revellers though; there were plenty of people diving in the mud and at one point, the rain was coming down so heavy that we saw a group of around 6 people all huddled underneath a large gazebo – walking to the arena under it, using it as an umbrella! Genius! 🙂

Trying to manoeuvre around in the mud .. not easy!!

Seeing all the teeny pop-up tents flooded with muddy water and floating across the fields was heart-breaking though, some were even completely flattened – I felt so sorry for their owners! Thankfully, we had the trusty mansion with us again which provided much needed shelter from the constant battering of the rain. I was so impressed with how dry the floor inside was and how clean we managed to keep it considering how muddy all of our clothes got. I guess it’s worth paying the extra money for a bigger, better tent if you want any kind of guarantee that it’s going to survive the various weather conditions you might experience – we got soaked on the Saturday and sunburnt on the Sunday!!

Our lovely welsh neighbours, our tent and our makeshift washing line 🙂

Home for the weekend

There were plenty of places to get food and drink and the arena and campsite areas were well equipped with everything you could possibly need; from logs to make campfires to phone charging stations, stalls selling jewellery and sweets to a mini disco inside a shed. The only downside was the ‘toilet facilities’ within the campsite areas – they made portaloo’s look like 5 star luxury … Eughhh and the organisation of the car parks/drop off and pick up points! It took 4 hours to get into the drop off/pick up area and I heard many stories about cars getting stuck in the mud and having to be towed out by tractors! Not good!!

DISCO DISCO DISCO!!

Yep, these are the toilets!!!

All in all, Leeds was great! Green Day who I had had never seen live before were a major highlight! Billie-Joe even picked two guys out of the audience to come up on stage and sing while he rocked the guitar … amaazing! Eminem of course, was a highlight as I have waited to see him in the flesh for years and he did not disappoint! The Lumineers as always were fantastic and electronic music-duo Disclosure were on fire as they played the Radio 1 tent .. it was packed with sweaty people going crazy to their hits one after another. Although I already saw them at T – Chase and Status were still a favourite, giving an 100% energetic performance.

I’m actually quite sad that I have to wait ’til next year for another festival 😦 Might be tempted to bring out the mansion and have a mini-festival in my back garden .. camping but with all the home comforts nearby if the rain should strike 🙂