sure
Just general observations really
I have to say that any individual marshalls I ran across were pretty helpful - they just seems a bit swamped, and to not know where the issues were, which seemed unusual, as they're normally pretty good.
Friday night we were in queues for 3 hours 2 miles from the site. One gate (in the village) was shut, with literally crowds of folks with no idea what the hell was going on. Folks were being turned away from that gate, but not told that there was another a mile or two down the road. There were quite a few seriously grumpy people, with it appeared, no idea what to do or where to go.
Other folks were just abandoning cars by the side of the road, and walking in. There were probably a couple of hundred cars there blocking footpaths, people's driveways and stuff. That's probably more of a policing issue really (they were equally invisible) but some form of traffic control, and a presence to tell people what was going on might have made things better.
Once we got in, our wristbands wern't checked moving from the campervan fields, to the site once. Also the access to the site from the campervan fields had a river going through it, that was kind of dark, fast moving and pretty close to welly top height. it was a bit hairy, and a couple of folks went over..no one mentioned of course that 20 yards away was another entrance that was river free...
Also, i thought there was a no glass policy? if there was, it wasn't enforced, and given the amount of people sloshing around in bare feet, I hope no one got hurt.
the toilets were a fecking nightmare - and weren't cleaned enough. They were also very helpfully locked around 10am monday, which considering how much peeps were struggling to get off site, wasn't that helpful.
The site turned into a bit of a health and safety nightmare by Sunday. Bogs had formed in some areas to almost knee height. These should have been cordoned off really, and wern't.
The car parks had SO few stewards in on monday. The ones that were there really seemed to be trying to help, but were just overwhelmed by the number of people trying to get out. We passed a metal trackway that seemes to have been pulled up and stacked up on the grass when we did get out, which didn't seem hugely helpful. People having to pay anything up to £40 to get their cars pulled out seemed a bit steep too. The car parks were a bit of an acident waiting to happen too tbh. Loads of cars spinning all over the place trying to keep moving, and then unable to steer in the mud. we saw 2 cars get hit - but I'll be amazed if no people were.
Overall, it was a good fest, and i had a blast, but the organisation wasn't great. Sure they took a lot of water, and did well to get things up and running at all, but we'd known that was going to be a wet 'un for a week. Contingency planning didn't seem to exist really, and preparation for the rain seemed non existent. Marshalls and police didn't seem to be in the right place, at the right time, and were overwhelmed when they were.
Music wise? A+, no worries on that score. Organisation? d-, must try harder, felt a bit like being at a £30 hippy fest, only with food and beer prices from Ascot.
JTG said:
again, examples would be good, anything involving Oxfam I can take note of and feed back and one or two of the organisers read the boards so anything relevant to them should be picked up if you're specific
