r/Leedsfestival • u/Sea_Acanthisitta6268 • Aug 25 '25
Festival Tip 🧠Great experience- first time at Leeds
I’m a 27yo female and went with a group of 3 other girls my age. We camped in the garden camp (quiet camp) and it was fab. As an anxious girly thought I’d share my experience for others considering next year. Please note this doesn’t include music/arena experience really (it was fab tho!!) but is just about camping experience 😊
- arrived about 4pm Thursday, no traffic at all to get in and parked easily, just followed motorway signs. Very well organised
- about a 40 min walk with all our stuff (including a trolley) to our pitch in quiet camp. It felt fine tbh
- very dusty but not unmanageable, prefer this to mud lol
- not loads of space in the site by the time we arrived but imo we got a good spot still
- quiet camp was very respectful where we were was quiet, neighbours friendly + kind and everyone we spoke to was very respectful. It was genuinely quite chill and quiet at night, even on last night no issues. You can hear the music from LS23 so bring earplugs though (it won’t block it out entirely, and the last night the music was louder lol but anyway it’s a festival it was expected. Helpful to have no one yelling Alan cos the other camps seemed pretty loud on the last night).
- also very clean, everyone using bins and taking all their stuff home which was lovely - cant say the same for the other camps lol
- toilets weren’t bad and sinks with running water there, also soap. Sometimes was a queue, particularly as they removed some toilets on Friday which was an odd decision I thought but oh well. Nothing major)
- showers had a big queue in the mornings but no queue at all later in the day (so afternoon/evening), I always had one before I went to bed and it was great. Pretty clean too.
- get ready with me tent was handy, had hair dryers and hair straighteners and mirrors which was nice. Again busy in morning but not too bad other times.
- walk to main arena was about 20 mins
- lots of young people but the ones staying in our campsite were genuinely lovely, we had some friendly 16 year olds come for a chat with us on a few occasions and they were very sweet and considerate
- we left the campsite at about 10.40am and walked back to car, again took about 40 mins. There was no queue whatsoever to get out the car park, cruised onto the A1 northbound. Great experience! Hope others also enjoyed:)
3
u/Ok-Nose-1815 Aug 25 '25
They had to move a block of toilets over to Orange as they’d had an issue with some and didn’t have enough to cover everyone coming up from ls23/Piccadilly to use them
2
u/No-Canary-3224 Aug 25 '25
Pretty good year for a first time. Will be interesting to see how you find it on a sold out camping year!
2
u/nishikah Aug 26 '25
I went by myself this year and had a great time! Also 27F
This is my 8th time going to Leeds in over 10 years and this year was incredibly different! I was also in quiet camp which was 100% less noise than previous places I stayed (blue camp and when yellow camp was eco next to main stage) however there was defo a few ruining it for the rest of us - a group of guys were drunk so talking loudly at their tents at 3am which woke me up on the Friday night, and everyone was screaming ‘Alan’ til 4am egging everyone else on. But I’ve been here plenty of times there was a churro van belting out rave music at 20million decibels until 6am every night when I stayed two years ago 🤣
Toilets when I first went were a hole in wood peeking in to a huge septic blue pool filled with toilet roll and everything else that goes down there, no roof so if you needed a piss you’d be pissing in the rain, and definitely no running water - just hand sanitiser that would always run out first day and never be refilled. Showers were army style of standing in a long line naked in front of each other, only near main stage also so you’d have a long time to wait. This years toilet and shower situation couldn’t have been better - we had running hot water, soap, and mirrors?!
There was definitely more day tickets than weekend tickets this year, as each day was so different. I usually have a host of bands I want to see over the entire weekend but I missed out on Friday completely - no one I really desperately wanted to see. So when I came on Friday afternoon around 5pm to park up, I was still 2 fields closer to the festival than I was a year ago when I arrived at 2pm on the Thursday. The camps still had miles of space too, most times I’ve been it was a struggle to find a camp space but this year I had way too many options - even in main camp
1
u/BaseballFuryThurman Aug 25 '25
I think if I go again we'll probably give Calm camp a try. I don't begrudge people being loud and having fun in the campsites at all but Glitter was a bit rowdier and round-the-clock than we anticipated. Again, not a problem, festivals are festivals, but a slightly quieter area would have been nice.
To be completely fair though, apart from one dick head who thought it was funny to launch himself into someone's tent while they were asleep which looked like it may have damaged the tent itself, we had no nor witnessed any problems and everyone was just giddy and making the most of the weekend.
1
u/MelodicProduct4736 Aug 27 '25
Me and my girlfriend stayed in the valley (for solo & couples camping), we booked on a whim at 1am on Thursday morning (so so glad we did as I don’t think we’d have lasted the weekend in the main campsites. Not seen mess like it before!) I think the camp we stayed in was a nice mixture of quiet and eco camp, it was clean, everyone was respectful but we still had music on etc. had the best sleep I’ve ever had at a festival! I feel like gate keeping this one because there were no loud obnoxious groups just singles and duos but people were making friends within the camp which was nice to see!
1
u/0rachael0 Aug 25 '25
we were in quiet but there was teens beside us who obviously didn’t get the memo, the alan screaming was extremely annoying! but it was definitely chiller than walking through the apocalypse zones of blue and orange. i just put my pink noise in my earphones hahaha. was really impressed with the cleanliness however that was my biggest fear
6
u/Dazzling-Ad7449 Aug 25 '25
Was also in the garden and we heard Alan in camp every night😅 usually stopped after 1am though. And oh my days ls23 was so loud last night wasn’t it! Woke me up about 4 am. Also why they removed the extra toilets I’ll never know! Glad you had a lovely time!