Download Festival - Donington 10th - 12th June 2005
Friday
Originally, we had planned to travel to Donington on the Thursday evening, set up camp and chill. Then, I noticed that the first band we wanted to see, Fozzy, was not on until 13:00 and change, on the Friday. So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided that we should go early on the Friday morning instead, thus avoiding an extra night in the tent, much to the disgust of secondborn and delight of firstborn. On the one hand, it was a good decision; we did get an extra night in our beds; on the other it was a lousy decision, because, had we gone to the campsite the day before, we would have had a good mile less to carry all of our stuff. Ah, swings, roundabouts and other playground equipment! Lessons learned the hard way…
We arrived in good time, unloading tent, air mattresses, some nutritional essentials and assorted crap, and began our hike to the campsite. I didn’t die en route, surprisingly, although I did suspect the onset of a major coronary episode a number of times during the route march. Eventually, after several hours trudging in sweltering heat, we selected a patch of grass (close to some easily recognisable landmarks) to become our home for the next couple of days.
In spite of my advancing years, I had never, ever, actually erected a tent before. I really had only the vaguest idea of what needed to be done, and the ‘instructions’ were only marginally worthy of their title. The likelihood of us sleeping on air mattresses directly beneath the stars was disturbingly high, but, playing the role of ‘The Good Father’, I assured my offspring that I was perfectly in control of the situation, and proceeded to give the impression that I did, indeed, know what to do. Of course, I was making it all up as I went along, gleaning what little I could from the pictures in the destructions, whilst handling the various rods, poles, and pegs with confident authority. Sliding poles through sleeves in the nylon outer tent, I bid the children farewell as they embarked on a recce back to the car, to try and move it closer and bring some additional items back to the tent. If I was going to make a pillock of myself with several square metres of nylon, a couple of dozen metal pegs, and a mallet, I wasn’t giving them the benefit of recording it for posterity, and providing them with hours of amusement too! Much to my own surprise, I managed to set up the outer tent, hang the two inner tents, and peg down the groundsheet, before they returned. I think I hid my complete exhaustion with great panache. Inflating the air mattresses would have to wait – a decision I would later regret, naturally.
As time was moving along, and we did want to catch Fozzy, we headed off to get our tickets exchanged for wristbands. It was now 12:30. We had half an hour to get our wristbands, march a mile across Donington Park to the Snickers tent, and stake out a spot in front of WWE superstar and Fozzy vocalist, Chris (Jericho) Irvine. It seemed straightforward enough. Then, we saw the queue for wristband exchange. Quite why it was taking so long for a ticket to be shown and a wristband to be placed around one’s wrist still puzzles me – I figured that the whole process could not possibly take much more than 30 seconds per person, surely. Still, 25 minutes later, we were still slowly, inexorably approaching the man with the bands. At long last, it was our turn and yep, no more than 30 seconds later, all three of us were hurrying through the entrance and across site to the far corners North West Leicestershire to scope out some huge rock stars.
Originally, we had planned to travel to Donington on the Thursday evening, set up camp and chill. Then, I noticed that the first band we wanted to see, Fozzy, was not on until 13:00 and change, on the Friday. So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided that we should go early on the Friday morning instead, thus avoiding an extra night in the tent, much to the disgust of secondborn and delight of firstborn. On the one hand, it was a good decision; we did get an extra night in our beds; on the other it was a lousy decision, because, had we gone to the campsite the day before, we would have had a good mile less to carry all of our stuff. Ah, swings, roundabouts and other playground equipment! Lessons learned the hard way…
We arrived in good time, unloading tent, air mattresses, some nutritional essentials and assorted crap, and began our hike to the campsite. I didn’t die en route, surprisingly, although I did suspect the onset of a major coronary episode a number of times during the route march. Eventually, after several hours trudging in sweltering heat, we selected a patch of grass (close to some easily recognisable landmarks) to become our home for the next couple of days.
In spite of my advancing years, I had never, ever, actually erected a tent before. I really had only the vaguest idea of what needed to be done, and the ‘instructions’ were only marginally worthy of their title. The likelihood of us sleeping on air mattresses directly beneath the stars was disturbingly high, but, playing the role of ‘The Good Father’, I assured my offspring that I was perfectly in control of the situation, and proceeded to give the impression that I did, indeed, know what to do. Of course, I was making it all up as I went along, gleaning what little I could from the pictures in the destructions, whilst handling the various rods, poles, and pegs with confident authority. Sliding poles through sleeves in the nylon outer tent, I bid the children farewell as they embarked on a recce back to the car, to try and move it closer and bring some additional items back to the tent. If I was going to make a pillock of myself with several square metres of nylon, a couple of dozen metal pegs, and a mallet, I wasn’t giving them the benefit of recording it for posterity, and providing them with hours of amusement too! Much to my own surprise, I managed to set up the outer tent, hang the two inner tents, and peg down the groundsheet, before they returned. I think I hid my complete exhaustion with great panache. Inflating the air mattresses would have to wait – a decision I would later regret, naturally.
As time was moving along, and we did want to catch Fozzy, we headed off to get our tickets exchanged for wristbands. It was now 12:30. We had half an hour to get our wristbands, march a mile across Donington Park to the Snickers tent, and stake out a spot in front of WWE superstar and Fozzy vocalist, Chris (Jericho) Irvine. It seemed straightforward enough. Then, we saw the queue for wristband exchange. Quite why it was taking so long for a ticket to be shown and a wristband to be placed around one’s wrist still puzzles me – I figured that the whole process could not possibly take much more than 30 seconds per person, surely. Still, 25 minutes later, we were still slowly, inexorably approaching the man with the bands. At long last, it was our turn and yep, no more than 30 seconds later, all three of us were hurrying through the entrance and across site to the far corners North West Leicestershire to scope out some huge rock stars.
Saturday
Saturday and Sunday were always going to be long and, mostly, uneventful, as I had no interest in the Napster stage whatsoever, the Snickers stage only on the Sunday, and the main stage not until much later in the day. Besides, Friday had already provided me with enough excitement to last the weekend as it was!
Day two started off slowly with a bizarre breakfast of fruit juice, water, rough oatcakes and cream cheese, breadsticks, Pringles and grapes. My Beyonce bed and sleeping bag was very comfortable and warm, and I was in no hurry to get out of it. However, I had no clean underwear and, as much as I would have preferred to stay right where I was, even I realised the need for clean grunts after 30 hours in the ones I was wearing! We grumpily headed off on another sortie to the car for baby wipes, toilet roll and some other little luxuries, like water. The whole round trip took a couple of hours and, by the time we got back to the tent, I was ready for a nap. As the girls went off to investigate Bowling For Soup, I resorted to a sip or two of red wine, followed by a couple of hours sleep. I awoke shortly before they returned; we had more munchies, before making our way back to the Arena to prepare for HIM, Velvet Revolver and Black Sabbath.
Saturday and Sunday were always going to be long and, mostly, uneventful, as I had no interest in the Napster stage whatsoever, the Snickers stage only on the Sunday, and the main stage not until much later in the day. Besides, Friday had already provided me with enough excitement to last the weekend as it was!
Day two started off slowly with a bizarre breakfast of fruit juice, water, rough oatcakes and cream cheese, breadsticks, Pringles and grapes. My Beyonce bed and sleeping bag was very comfortable and warm, and I was in no hurry to get out of it. However, I had no clean underwear and, as much as I would have preferred to stay right where I was, even I realised the need for clean grunts after 30 hours in the ones I was wearing! We grumpily headed off on another sortie to the car for baby wipes, toilet roll and some other little luxuries, like water. The whole round trip took a couple of hours and, by the time we got back to the tent, I was ready for a nap. As the girls went off to investigate Bowling For Soup, I resorted to a sip or two of red wine, followed by a couple of hours sleep. I awoke shortly before they returned; we had more munchies, before making our way back to the Arena to prepare for HIM, Velvet Revolver and Black Sabbath.
Sunday
Sunday was always going to be the slowest day of Download 2005, for me and firstborn. To start with, Henry Rollins was opening the Snickers stage at 10AMish, then there was nothing at all on worth seeing until The MC5 hit that very same stage at around 7:30 PM, followed swiftly by Motorhead. That said, I had planned to catch the first half hour or so of Slipknot’s set, just so that I could take some pics for secondborn and, truth be told, I actually have quite a lot of respect for the masked weirdos, so that wasn’t too much of a problem.
However, being old and infirm, I completely forgot about Henry Rollins and was only reminded I wanted to see him when I heard some people from the next tent saying how good he’d been! Doh! Blond moment! Yes, blokes can have blond moments too.
The day started off breezy and became windier as it progressed. Secondborn had arranged, somewhat ill-advisedly in my opinion, to go see Weezer in Birmingham on the following day, due to leave our home town by the 12:30 train. I considered our options and decided that if we left our Donington Park departure until the Monday morning, the chances of us being home in time for her to catch that train were, at best, slim, considering that she would certainly need to shower before leaving. I mean, she was really beginning to smell bad at this point ;-) So, we idled away the morning, ate our lunch and then the offspring made a trip to the car with the sleeping bags and assorted crap that we could be bothered to take home. Meanwhile, I dismantled the tent and somehow try to fit it into the Action Man kit bag-sized nylon affair that it had all come out of two days earlier.
Tent pegs! No one explained these curious items to me. You hammer them into the ground with a mallet. Seemed straightforward enough; I coped admirably with that. Ah, but, extracting them from deep within the Earth is an entirely different matter. A mallet certainly does not do you any favours in that task; you need some kind of hookified do-da, which, naturally, I had neglected to procure. Pulling on the guy ropes does not always succeed in liberating the bloody things either. No. The only thing you can do is break all of your fingernails digging into the soil and brutally extracting them, in spite of their obvious desire to remain at one with nature. And what sort of sub-standard metallic compound do they fabricate these things from anyway? Tin foil? The bloody things bend easier than a rubber contortionist.
I’m not a big fan of tent pegs, as you have probably gathered. I would have thought that, in these early years of the 21 st century, someone would have come up with a more sensible item than the tent peg. But, you didn’t come her to witness me ranting on about tent pegs. If you did you’re sadder than I am. The bottom line is that I managed to take down the tent, in a mild gale, and even fold it in such a fashion that, not only did I actually force it all back into the bag from whence it came, I even managed to stuff the mallet in there too! Damn! That’s progress.
Me and firstborn schlepped all the remaining stuff back to the car, whilst secondborn went to see Funeral For A Friend, and we did so gladly, given the two options. I cannot stress how much I hate FFAF. So much, in fact that, given the choice between hiking a mile weighed down with camping gear, or watching them perform, I gladly chose the former. Anyone who knows me will tell you, that’s an awful lot of hate, right there.
Still, we got the car packed up and ready for a quick getaway, before making our way to the main stage area to catch a little Slipknot.
Sunday was always going to be the slowest day of Download 2005, for me and firstborn. To start with, Henry Rollins was opening the Snickers stage at 10AMish, then there was nothing at all on worth seeing until The MC5 hit that very same stage at around 7:30 PM, followed swiftly by Motorhead. That said, I had planned to catch the first half hour or so of Slipknot’s set, just so that I could take some pics for secondborn and, truth be told, I actually have quite a lot of respect for the masked weirdos, so that wasn’t too much of a problem.
However, being old and infirm, I completely forgot about Henry Rollins and was only reminded I wanted to see him when I heard some people from the next tent saying how good he’d been! Doh! Blond moment! Yes, blokes can have blond moments too.
The day started off breezy and became windier as it progressed. Secondborn had arranged, somewhat ill-advisedly in my opinion, to go see Weezer in Birmingham on the following day, due to leave our home town by the 12:30 train. I considered our options and decided that if we left our Donington Park departure until the Monday morning, the chances of us being home in time for her to catch that train were, at best, slim, considering that she would certainly need to shower before leaving. I mean, she was really beginning to smell bad at this point ;-) So, we idled away the morning, ate our lunch and then the offspring made a trip to the car with the sleeping bags and assorted crap that we could be bothered to take home. Meanwhile, I dismantled the tent and somehow try to fit it into the Action Man kit bag-sized nylon affair that it had all come out of two days earlier.
Tent pegs! No one explained these curious items to me. You hammer them into the ground with a mallet. Seemed straightforward enough; I coped admirably with that. Ah, but, extracting them from deep within the Earth is an entirely different matter. A mallet certainly does not do you any favours in that task; you need some kind of hookified do-da, which, naturally, I had neglected to procure. Pulling on the guy ropes does not always succeed in liberating the bloody things either. No. The only thing you can do is break all of your fingernails digging into the soil and brutally extracting them, in spite of their obvious desire to remain at one with nature. And what sort of sub-standard metallic compound do they fabricate these things from anyway? Tin foil? The bloody things bend easier than a rubber contortionist.
I’m not a big fan of tent pegs, as you have probably gathered. I would have thought that, in these early years of the 21 st century, someone would have come up with a more sensible item than the tent peg. But, you didn’t come her to witness me ranting on about tent pegs. If you did you’re sadder than I am. The bottom line is that I managed to take down the tent, in a mild gale, and even fold it in such a fashion that, not only did I actually force it all back into the bag from whence it came, I even managed to stuff the mallet in there too! Damn! That’s progress.
Me and firstborn schlepped all the remaining stuff back to the car, whilst secondborn went to see Funeral For A Friend, and we did so gladly, given the two options. I cannot stress how much I hate FFAF. So much, in fact that, given the choice between hiking a mile weighed down with camping gear, or watching them perform, I gladly chose the former. Anyone who knows me will tell you, that’s an awful lot of hate, right there.
Still, we got the car packed up and ready for a quick getaway, before making our way to the main stage area to catch a little Slipknot.
