DO I LOVE OR HATE FESTIVAL CAMPING?

At 44 years old, I’ve come to the conclusion that festival camping and I were never meant to be. And yet, for nearly twenty-five years I kept going back like a fool who enjoys emotional whiplash. This isn’t one of those “I used to love it but now I’m too old” stories. I hated it from the very first moment, I just carried on anyway.

I’m 44, and I’ve always despised camping at festivals. Leeds did it for me at my very first festival. It pissed it down. I still remember trudging back to the brown campsite, which felt like it was fucking miles away, my wellies getting sucked off by the mud with every step. I just kept thinking, “This definitely didn’t look like this on the telly.” This hasn’t been some case of my attitude changing after I supposedly ‘grew up,’ because right from the off, I’ve been thinking, nope, this is not for me. Between 16 and 40, I’ve done it anyway, just for kicks, I think. You know the routine, carting half your home around a mud-pit, sleeping in a cold nylon cocoon, queuing for the loo to traumatise yourself forevermore, rising early with another person’s bass-line drilling its way into your brain as the temperature steadily climbs to boiling by noon when the sun is on your tent, and acting like this is peak enjoyment.

My mate and I hit the Isle of Wight Festival for the full Friday to Monday chaos a few years ago, and honestly, the most painful part was not even the horrendously long journey, it was surviving the press camping area, the ridiculous food and beer prices, where a single super pint felt like taking out a mortgage. Luckily, our friends at This Feeling saved some of the day sharing some of their rider.

We had rocked up with the smallest £25 quid tent known to mankind (from Argos of all places, wtf were we thinking) paired with the biggest blow-up bed ever engineered. We were like two clowns trying to camp in a shoebox with a bouncy castle inside. We spent the long weekend living off Belvitas, McCoys, digestives and Sports Direct pouches, spiced rum and cherryade (don’t ask, we still don’t know) like absolute champions. By Sunday, we had had enough, packed up early and ended up sleeping in the car. All in the weekend cost about a hundred quid for the two of us, and somehow that made it even funnier, two idiots on a budget having the best time anyway.

I rang my friend this morning to reminisce about the trip and we spent a solid half an hour absolutely howling with laughter as I sipped (or rather, tried to sip) my flat white.

I guess that’s the nuance, as much as I hate all the scruffiness and the endless queuing, the memories are solid gold.

It does not end there. I still have nightmares from washing my hair with cold and murky water, hunched over in a field at Glastonbury. Waking up to the sound of my fella snoring and vodka breath poured on you like a dragon with gastroesophageal reflux disease? No thanks. I would rather lick the floor of a portaloo at Leeds Festival back in 98.

Walking back to the tent and getting pummelled by rain at midnight is my favourite, especially when you finally get back, and the guy in the next tent is throwing up in a bush as you try to nod off while another guy screams wthe lyrics to a shit song that ended hours ago. Ahhh, to be lying there freezing with a half-empty can of Strongbow as a pillow. No thanks.

Morning breaks, and it is time to clean your underarms with a baby wipe while staring at your crying, condensation-filled tent and pondering about your hangover. What is happening? Am I having fun? Why do I look like someone got mugged by a kebab van?

You are not going to find anything like that on a 300-pound glossy poster. There will be happy people and golden hour dancing. It is not going to show you stumbling about pitch black mud at 2 am trying to find your tent, your friends, your lost dignity and that damned inflatable bed that has let you down more times than your cheating ex.

Get glamping, I hear you cry. Spend thousands for your luxury tent equipped with beds, Primark fairy lights and a mirror because the ticket prices just are not skinting you enough. Stick it on Klarna and pay interest too, why not. In the 90s, this would have been known as another person’s home. Today, you would be persuaded that you are living like a king in the countryside. The only thing is you are still camping in a muddy field waiting for a shower with barely any hot water. And a bit of heavy rain is all it would take to turn your hell into another level of hell. Just spent extra money to be a little less miserable. Genius.

Glastonbury looks magical on TV. In reality, it is an expensive, muddy shithole that once gave me food poisoning. It may even be one of the worst festivals without drugs, and I have never done any drugs in my life. Magic on TV reality is spending way too much money on a huge, muddy mess. The portaloos give you severe PTSD, and the queues for them are longer than lines of regret after 1997.

To be fair, there are those rare golden moments. The sun finally comes out, your favourite band walks on stage, you are three ciders deep, and suddenly everything feels like the best decision you have ever made. For about twenty minutes, you forget you are basically living in a damp trench. Then the clouds roll back in, your drink is warm, and you remember you have not slept since Thursday.

Data is also proving the need to be off your face. A survey conducted in 2025 showed that 92.8 per cent drank alcohol and almost 49 per cent were taking MDMA. The Loop tested more than a thousand samples, and the top three were ketamine, MDMA and cocaine. The average MDMA pill weighed 193mg. Party? This is a cry for help.

Organisers know what is going on. They are not selling music anymore but selling a dream for 9 quid a pint. Without alcohol and drugs, you are paying fortunes for feeling like an 18-year-old broke loser who lost her deposit or a 44-year-old idiot who wants to pretend she is young while camping.

Medical tents each year look like battlefields. Dehydrations, poisonings, collapses, and the usual I thought it was paracetamol, officer. Yet lines for tickets and glamping upgrades are longer than the portaloo line at 4 am.

Why would anyone do it? Effort justification, FOMO, social pressure and the desire to have a story. You would not believe me, mate. Got so mashed I lost one shoe in the mud and woke up with a rucksack of some stranger in my 900-pound yurt.

Only when you are completely intoxicated. Sober? Then you just pay a lot of money for being freezing broke, tired and scammed. When I am camping, the fun for me lasts about as long as the battery on my 20-pound festival power bank.

I still love live music but I will not do it until there is a proper hotel or somebody’s house with actual walls, toilet facilities and lockable doors. Call me old, call me boring, I do not care. I just want to enjoy the music without feeling like I am homeless.