Gatche

As soon as these appeared at Green Man I stopped going to Green Man - not just because of the disgust at what you can see and smell, but because of the constant banging of the doors when people come out of them. Found myself unable to sleep or use the facilities on the Green Man site, so on the Friday morning booked myself into a very cheap hotel about 10 miles away and drove into and out of site each day for the rest of the festival and avoiding any booze. Spoils the experience and won't be going back there I'm afraid. Was booked into End of the Road with my wife in the 'glamping' area and seriously considered not turning up when this was announced, in spite of the fact this would have meant us blowing hundreds of pounds. I get why some prefer the composts to the basic portaloos (though I don't), but the glamping toilets in previous years were significantly better than standard portaloos, so this was a significant change. In the end I came up with the 'solution' of: Eating one small, very plain, non-fibrous meal a day, only drinking lower alcohol drinks I'd brought in myself, and not drinking anything with alcohol later than about 6pm - so EOTR traders lost out on quite a bit of income, and I didn't get to enjoy the variety of culinary delights - the traders should blame EOTR and not me. Using Vicks vaporub on my nostrils for the morning pee I needed to have in the glamping toilets - the on site urinals were a bit far away for this - worked well to stop the smell and would recommend. Taking the best earplugs I could find (brand called Quies) which were absolutely excellent - though the glamping compost loos didn't have the same banging doors anyway. Recommended for anyone who suffers with festival noise generally, as they blocked out other noises as well. On the Friday and Saturday morning, driving to the Tesco in Shaftesbury (they open at 6am, so before I'd wake up - I'd looked it up!) for my morning Number 2 - not sure how this fits with being environmentally better, but it worked for me. The dietary changes I made meant I didn't have quite the same sense of urgency as I normally might at that time of day and my blood alcohol levels wouldn't have been an issue, meaning the drive was comfortable and the toilet was clean. We then left the festival completely at about 9am on Sunday morning, though that was partly so that the Mrs could visit family, not just for my personal needs..... Anyway, it's been lovely coming to EOTR every year since 2015, but I/we won't be back unless there is some sort of change on this, which I doubt there will be. From the various people I overheard talking about the change, the majority view was negative and that it came down to these loos probably being cheaper to hire, rather than the environmental reasons which EOTR gave. I've no idea whether or not this is accurate.

Sound quality isn't great but, given the comments on other threads about Future Islands potentially not being a great fit for EOTR, thought this was an interesting watch

Love (mostly) lurking on this forum. Pretty much every year the number of people disappointed with something or other about the opening announcement comfortably outweighs the number of people who are happy with it. And pretty much every year the number of people posting after the event that they really enjoyed the festival comfortably outweighs those who say they were disappointed by it. One thing that I enjoy most about the forum is the broad range of opinions expressed by contributors with lots of different musical preferences - great to get a heads up regarding so many of the artists. It's much more helpful to non-music aficionados (like me!) than the forum content of another festival which happens a couple of weeks before EOTR. That forum is unfortunately often dominated by contributions from posters who seem to revel in being condescending about anything which doesn't fit in with their narrow musical tastes - hope this place doesn't descend to that level.

Been to the festival every year since 2015 and this was potentially our favourite so far. We do the boutique camping (sorry!) and so the separate entrance to the site with absolutely no queue at all when we arrived in mid-afternoon was a great start. Comments about the site layout potentially changing next year have been noted. Fine if they do change back but, selfishly, I'd be happy if they didn't. Was a bit worried about what I thought might be fewer showers than normal when arriving - they appeared to use the same ones used at Green Man, and thought there might be longer queues. In the end I woke up really early on each day and so had the showers to myself, then went back to bed. Small queues later on, but only the same as every other year, which was surprising given the much greater numbers in boutique than previous years. I was a fan of the loos. They were MUCH MUCH better than my experience at Green Man, both in terms of the lack of visibility of 'what lies beneath' and also that they didn't have the really loud banging wooden doors, which kept me awake until the early hours each day at Green Man. Helped by being able to use the ones in boutique, which seemed to have cleaners there often, but also used the ones on site during the day, and didn't have any issues. We'd left by the time of the 'lock out'. Music was great. Weather was fantastic. Food was to the usual decent standard. I'm not too fussy so just went to the places with the smallest/no queues. The food stall in the boutique camping was the only disappointment - my wife tells me they didn't know how to make a latte (apparently you just add milk to an espresso, but they watered it down) and the breakfast sandwiches were poor quality Beer was good. Didn't really feel as though I had to queue anywhere for more than five minutes, and everyone behaved nicely in the queues. People were friendly - as always. One small point but my wife has been pinged today as a Covid contact, which we assume to have been on site. She's been tested and is negative so far. I haven't been pinged, so we're assuming it relates to when she spent time in the crafts tent as that's the only time she was in a specific place for any period of time when I wasn't also around. Already booked for next year.