Festival season is well and truly upon us! While Glastonbury may be over, Reading and Leeds, Cream Fields, Wireless Festival, and many others are just over the horizon. What could be more fun than spending the weekend with your friends listening to live music all day?
However, several days spent partying in a field can take its toll on your body, whether the sun is shining or you’re wading through mud. If you’re a first-timer or a festival veteran, our top tips for surviving a music festival could be just what you need!
1. Come prepared
The first step is to make sure you plan out everything you need. This is more than just a tent and sleeping bag. Before you leave home, make sure you have everything you need for any weather. This is particularly important in the UK – we all know that British summers can vary between scorching sun and torrential rain, sometimes within the same weekend.
The clothes you choose to take with you can be the difference between enjoying the festival and passing out from heatstroke or catching pneumonia. You need to pack clothing light enough to avoid boiling alive in the thick of a crowd in intense sunshine, as well as wellies and waterproofs for if the field becomes a quagmire. Even when it’s hot during the day, it won’t be at night, so hoodies and jumpers are advisable to keep warm after the sun goes down.
Aside from clothing, you should bring:
- Snacks – festival food can be expensive and it can be easy to get so caught up in the music that you forget to go and eat. A few snacks in your bag can keep your energy up.
- Sun cream
- Wet wipes – these are a must! Festival hygiene isn’t exactly of a high standard – see the description of the toilets below!
While not an essential, an air bed is also a great shout – it’s amazing the difference this will make to a night’s sleep when compared to sleeping on the floor of your tent. It is particularly advisable if you suffer from a bad back or other orthopaedic afflictions.
2. Stay hydrated
This is a biggie. Even if the weather is cold and miserable, dehydration is an inevitable consequence of watching bands and musicians for hours. You might be dancing. You might be moshing. You might prefer to just stand and watch. Either way, you’ll be losing water from your body as sweat. If the sun is out, it only gets worse.
Don’t be tempted to turn to alcoholic drinks to quench your thirst – that can lead to other problems (see below). When you’re dehydrated, water is your best friend. Of course, most music festivals don’t let you bring drinks in from outside (Glastonbury being a notable exception), but they do provide water bottles and hydration stations. These handy taps will be dotted around the festival, often close to bars or toilet facilities.
3. Dealing with the sun
While water is your best friend, the sun is decidedly not! Of course, if you’re heading to a British music festival, the sun will most likely pull an Axl Rose and not show up. If it does, however, be prepared! I have been to more than one festival that has left me soaked one day and sunburnt the next. Don’t be like me, wishing you had brought sun cream!
Another bit of sun advice is to take some time to find shade. Some of the stages are usually in tents anyway, but if all your favourite acts are on the main stage, you could be spending hours directly in the sun. Have a break. Find a nice shady spot to rest. Remembering to do this could save you from suffering sunstroke. This is when you have a body temperature of over 40.6°C and can cause dizziness, headaches, mental confusion, profuse sweating, red skin, and even seizures. Sunstroke (or heatstroke) can be very serious, eventually resulting in unconsciousness and organ failure if the body temperature is not reduced. Believe me, you don’t want to be dealing with that when you’re sleeping in a tent, far from civilisation!
4. Don’t booze too hard!
Okay, we all know alcohol isn’t good for us. We also know there is no point in saying “don’t drink at a music festival”. For many people, getting drunk with friends in a field for a weekend is half the appeal. So I won’t say it.
What I will say is don’t go too crazy! It’s never nice nursing a hangover; it’s worse when you’re waking up in a tent, surrounded by thousands of noisy strangers. If you pass out in the wrong place, you can wake up lost and disoriented. Plus, liver damage.
Most importantly, being intoxicated in the middle of a huge crowd is downright dangerous. If you can’t stand up and the crowd surges forward, you could easily be crushed or trampled.
Moderation never hurt anyone. And it’s always best to avoid a trip to the medical tent if possible!
5. Don’t eat spicy or suspicious food
If you’ve been to music festival before, you’ll know about, and dread, the toilets. You’re probably having traumatic flashbacks now I’ve brought them up. If you know anyone who’s been to a festival, you’ll know them by reputation.
If you know literally nothing about music festivals, campsite toilets often consist of a trench dug in the ground, over which sits a wooden bench with holes in it at regular intervals, with a cubicle roughly constructed around it. In the arena, portaloos are the norm. After a day or two of heavy use by hundreds of people too muddy and/or drunk to care about hygiene or good aim, a visit to hell itself seems like a pleasant prospect compared to having to take a number two in one of these putrid cesspits.
For this reason, the last thing you want at a festival is diarrhoea. Don’t eat anything that looks undercooked. Don’t eat anything you’re not sure about. Don’t eat spicy food. Even if you’re a hot food lover, go for the burger over the curry. It’s just not worth it.
6. Avoid caffeine
Ahh, the morning coffee! The thing that many of us rely on to turn us from sleep-zombies into real people. Hangover cure #1. Flagging after a long day? Coffee time!
Except don’t! Caffeine is a temporary pick-me-up, but it is a diuretic. It will dehydrate you in the long run and make you urinate more. That’s the opposite of what you need at a festival!
7. Make sure you know where the medical tent is
Don’t go expecting an emergency. The vast majority of festival-goers have an injury-free weekend, where they get to watch their favourite bands, make friends, and go home with memories of the best of times (and perhaps a fair few gaps in those memories!). However, every festival claims its casualties. If someone has passed out in the crowd, sprained an ankle, or taken an accidental knock to the head and can’t remember their name, Medical and First Aid Festival Medical Services (FMS) will be somewhere on site. Take the time on your first day to scout out these tents. Then you’re prepared in case you or a member of your party are one of the unlucky ones.
With these tips in hand, you should be ready to (somewhat) protect your health at a music festival. And, of course, don’t forget to have fun! We hope you have a weekend to remember!
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