Ok, so to start with, the first thing that really got on my nerves wasn’t the fact that the campsite was incredibly far away from the car park (although, not as far as last year), but that the campsite was amazingly far from the actual stages. Last year, they weren’t too far away; you could go between from tent to stage in a minute or two. This year, they placed the stage about a mile away from the campsite (literally). It took about half an hour to walk between the two, meaning that by the time I had gotten from the car, to the campsite, set up the tent and gone to the stages, I’d missed a lot of the bands that were performing early on, and was very tired. I know it’s my fault for not getting there on the Thursday, but due to circumstances, it just wasn’t possible this year.

Then, next up, was that the road from the camp site to the stage was very dirty; as seen by my once black, worn-out trainers (that will now be going in the bin):

With it being dry, all the dirt was in the air, and to my bad fortune, I seemed to be allergic to the dust, as well. Fan-freaking-tastic. So not only was I tired from the walk, I was sneezing and rubbing my eyes, even though I’d taken five million hay-fever tablets. Wonderful. And to put the icing on the cake, the main stage was also positioned in a place that had this dust everywhere, meaning I felt rotten when watching the bands on the main stage. Hooray.

Next up on my list of things that annoyed me was that there were so many lazy idiots there. Now, I know that humans are generally ignorant, lazy bastards but ugh. People left litter literally everywhere (The floor was caked it in plates, cups, etc. You name it and it would be on the floor), people shouted stupid crap and threw bottles at the bands (I mean, if you don’t like them, don’t watch them. It’s not exactly hard to work that one out. And if you’re waiting for the next band, shut the hell up and just be patient. Christ.), and some people were just generally obnoxious. Of course, a number of people there are quite nice, but a lot aren’t. Ugh.

However, apart from those minor setbacks, it was all good, and I enjoyed myself.

Some of the bands I particularly liked included “The Offspring”, “Madina Lake”, “Ash”, “Rival Schools”, “Elliot Minor”, “Kill Hannah”, “Exit Ten” and “The Galvatrons”. In Fact, today I went out and bought three CDs; The Offspring’s “Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace”, Kill Hannah’s “Until There’s Nothing Left of Us”, and Exit Ten’s “Remember The Day”. I also imported about five of my Mother’s “Ash” CDs to my iTunes Library (One of the pros of having parents with a decent taste in music, heh).

All in all, it was good fun really. I would go into details about the performances, but I plan to review the albums in later blog posts, so I’ll include a section on the gig as well. Keep your eyes peeled.