Summer of Music... Part Two

Leeds Festival 2011

Today I'm back in work. A little worse for ware after a very long weekend but still excited about all the amazing and fantastic acts I bore witness to in that time. The weekend started at 2:00 am on Thursday morning. Myself and Laura dragged ourselves out of bed to make our way over to the wrong side of the Pennines to Bramham Park near Leeds.

The weather was dreadful, but after a few hours in the car we arrived to a very, very, very wet Leeds. After dragging everything for the weekend to the entrance in one go (because I'm a man and we don't do multiple trips to carry stuff), we had our bags searched, got our wrist bands and then set about choosing where to call home for the next few nights. Now, bear in mind it was dark and superbly wet, ladended with everything to keep us alive all weekend, you cant blame us for setting up camp at the fist possible opportunity. After much wondering around, we spotted a space large enough for our tent on a slight slope at the top of a hill, by one of the main paths. Those of you who know Leeds Festival will have by now possibly realised that we had set up camp right on the edge of Orange Camp hill. Anyway, after setting up our tent in the pouring rain, all out possessions wet, and the bed half inflated, we called it a night, got under a damp duvet and a spare ground sheet to prevent us getting even wetter by the rain coming in through not only the seams of the tent, but the main fabric itself.

We awoke on the Thursday morning after a few hours sleep and got the barbecue on the go for sausage butties, and the stove on for a hot drink. After this, it was a day of exploring with associated drinking.We soon discovered that we had pitched our tent right next to the fair and Piccadilly Place where there was to be a late night party every night. Oh well you love and learn, but to be honest, it wasn't that bad. The ear plugs did their job and the air-bed absorbed most of the bass lines that were reverberating through the earth.

With Thursday night out of the way, it was time for the main event, and the main reason I was there; the music. We crawled out of the tent, in the rain, to make breakfast, in the rain, which we then ate, in the rain. You must get the gist by now, it was raining a lot. So much in fact that we decided to get a new tent seeing as how our air-bed was floating on a pool of water that has accumulated at one side of our current tent. After erecting the new tent and getting all our stuff together, we sent into the main arena. I have been looking forward to going to Leeds Fest for about 10 years, but for one reason or another I never made it. But I finally had made it.

To be continued...

Related articles

• Reading and Leeds 2011: The story so far (part two) (guardian.co.uk)
• UK music festivals 2011 mapped - download the data (guardian.co.uk)