Scavenging

[Walter Sobchak]

We found 6 pop up tents a couple of others, a few chairs, loads of beer and wine. Left to go for a wander to find more and a shit, came back and it was all gone!

twats

[Haggis]

We found 6 pop up tents a couple of others, a few chairs, loads of beer and wine. Left to go for a wander to find more and a shit, came back and it was all gone!

twats

[Squall Moogle]

Scavenging - looking for or obtaining food or other objects in other people's rubbish.

Thieving - dishonestly taking something which belongs to someone else and keeping it.

It's a fine line as many times you can't tell if someone has actually abandoned their stuff or has simply wandered off to the loo.

[paulo80]

Didn't want to leave our tents because of some of this. While we were waiting around on Monday, our neighbours asked us to mind their tents while they were gone. 3 people went into their tents in the space of 20 minutes, 2 of the groups didn't have wristbands. Obviously theres absoultly nothing wrong with taking stuff people have left behind, my mate took a pop-up tent himself, just not sure if some would care if the tents were obviously still occupied!

[jameshunt]

Yeah, in my case though I did make sure that they were properly abandoned.

The greater evil in all this is wastage, it is absolutely disgusting the amount of perfectly good tents and camping equipment that people leave behind. A lot of these were slightly damaged (perhaps by the owners for fun in some cases), but there was plenty of mint condition stuff that would have just otherwise been chucked on a landfill.

It's as bad as the littering and pissing in hedges imo.

[ronniec111]

I reckon there were only about 24 cans on site, and scavengers just nicked them off each other!

[Dav0s]

we managed to get...

a 4 man tent, a large 8 man tent with 3 sleeping areas (although we only found 2 of them), and a massive 12 man tent which was damn heavy and awkward!

we were just about to leave the site, heading back from the final visit to the long drops and we and one of my party found about 36 cans of lager, so we decided to stay and drink it

[chuckley]

im sorry but how on earth can u say its been left, unless its lying scattered outside on the grass??

just brazenly going into a tent and taking its contents along with the tent is the SAME THING as those thieves that went into peoples tents and took whatever they could on weds n thurs nite, no matter how trivial.

and robbing gazebos?! how the hell did u know they were abandoned??????

[mikeb]

At around 0500 Monday morning while I was finishing packing up there were some peeps on Hitchin Hill already going through random tents Sure, some were fairly obviously abandoned as per bleedin' usual but some defo weren't as proven by the occasional "fcuk off outta my tent" stylee response being heard. In the time taken for a quickie visit to the bogs just across the road, all the flags and a chair had 'walked' from a bunch of tents I'd past on the way there. I'm pretty sure the tents weren't abandoned either as they all just looked too good and the area too tidy etc. so I would guess the occupants woke up or got back to find stuff various had gone That plus hearing rather more than a few "sorry mate, wrong tent" 'explanations' very close by again this year was not good although at least I don't think anyone tried it on with my tent this time round. It's the one single reason why I'm always outta the site at the crack of dawn Monday with no sleep rather than leaving at my leisure much later in the day when the shuttle bus and train queues have hopefully died down to sensible levels. If I can't safely go for a wander on the Monday then there's absolutely no point staying around.

I seriously hate the way lazy selfish morons leave all their cr@p behind and in many respects it's good that others find some of it a good home but tatting something that isn't actually and quite clearly abandoned is simply thieving and there are no excuses whatsoever for it. Giving it the old "sorry mate wrong tent" or "sorry mate thought you'd left it behind" mean pretty much the same thing in my book ... scumbag alert !! Grrrrrrr

Edited July 2, 2009 by mikeb

[mouth]

made sure we put the sack barrows away before heading to bed, around 5 am we were still up and peeps were coming over asking if they were ares,

[benissright]

Well it wasnt that hard for me to spot which was left or what people were coming back to. As the stuff people were coming back to had stuff more valuable than beer, tent and chairs...i.e. their rucksack and clothes!

I got 3 chairs and a rollmat which will come in good use for reading fest (my mates can have the 3 chairs) oh and a box of filter tips. Also found some vodka, a gazebo, a lot of tents - some good ones. But only took the pegs from those items.

[GlastoVirgin69]

I, like many others, don't have a problem with taking stuff that is blatantly abandoned. However, taking stuff that isn't abandoned is blatant theiving....

We made a run back to the car with the majority of our stuff monday morning, leaving the tent and a camping chair behind for a second trip as we wanted a wander round the site to get a poster and a nosey around some stalls in Greenfields area. We left the chair inside the tent and zipped up the tent thinking this would indicate to that it wasn't abandoned. We passed the tent on the start of our wander and asked the camping crew if it was alright leaving it there as stewards had been around about 9:30 waking people up and saying if the tent wasn't down by half ten eleven ish they would unpeg it whether there were people inside or not, claiming they wanted to go home. Such pleasant stewards.....

Anyways, the camping crew guy said "yeah, its fine, just leave it zipped up, we will only assume its been abandoned if the doors are open etc". So we went for our wander and then came back to the take the tent down only to find the tent door wide open and the chair gone. Grrr....

The two things that hacked me off. One, the chair wasn't one of the usual £5 odd camping chairs, it was a "Big Boy" that I got from Asda, bigger and sturdier than a normal £5 one (they seem to no longer sell them so can't get another ). I have had a couple of the £5 jobbies and they last 2 festies at most. This one had lasted four and was still as good as new, just a few spots of momento Glasto mud. Two, cos the thieving get who swiped the chair left the tent door open, the camping crew could have thought that the tent was abandoned. Luckily, it was still there.

I know its only a chair and its not like a wallet/phone etc but still, its the fact that someone didn't care to even contemplate that it wasn't abandoned and how are you supposed to leave your tent on the Monday, even just for a jimmy, if thats likely to happen?

Hope the chair collapses with em in it.....

[benissright]

I, like many others, don't have a problem with taking stuff that is blatantly abandoned. However, taking stuff that isn't abandoned is blatant theiving....

We made a run back to the car with the majority of our stuff monday morning, leaving the tent and a camping chair behind for a second trip as we wanted a wander round the site to get a poster and a nosey around some stalls in Greenfields area. We left the chair inside the tent and zipped up the tent thinking this would indicate to that it wasn't abandoned. We passed the tent on the start of our wander and asked the camping crew if it was alright leaving it there as stewards had been around about 9:30 waking people up and saying if the tent wasn't down by half ten eleven ish they would unpeg it whether there were people inside or not, claiming they wanted to go home. Such pleasant stewards.....

Anyways, the camping crew guy said "yeah, its fine, just leave it zipped up, we will only assume its been abandoned if the doors are open etc". So we went for our wander and then came back to the take the tent down only to find the tent door wide open and the chair gone. Grrr....

The two things that hacked me off. One, the chair wasn't one of the usual £5 odd camping chairs, it was a "Big Boy" that I got from Asda, bigger and sturdier than a normal £5 one (they seem to no longer sell them so can't get another ). I have had a couple of the £5 jobbies and they last 2 festies at most. This one had lasted four and was still as good as new, just a few spots of momento Glasto mud. Two, cos the thieving get who swiped the chair left the tent door open, the camping crew could have thought that the tent was abandoned. Luckily, it was still there.

I know its only a chair and its not like a wallet/phone etc but still, its the fact that someone didn't care to even contemplate that it wasn't abandoned and how are you supposed to leave your tent on the Monday, even just for a jimmy, if thats likely to happen?

Hope the chair collapses with em in it.....

[jameshunt]

Well it wasnt that hard for me to spot which was left or what people were coming back to. As the stuff people were coming back to had stuff more valuable than beer, tent and chairs...i.e. their rucksack and clothes!

I got 3 chairs and a rollmat which will come in good use for reading fest (my mates can have the 3 chairs) oh and a box of filter tips. Also found some vodka, a gazebo, a lot of tents - some good ones. But only took the pegs from those items.

[GlastoVirgin69]

I honestly dont know why you are surprised. You took all the stuff that everyone always takes and left the two items that are most commonly left behind. Ive never heard of this "zipped" up rule. Had i been next to your camp, seen you walk off with all your stuff and leave your tent zipped up, i would have done what most other people would have done. Take it!

[markeee]

Scavenging - looking for or obtaining food or other objects in other people's rubbish.

Thieving - dishonestly taking something which belongs to someone else and keeping it.

It's a fine line as many times you can't tell if someone has actually abandoned their stuff or has simply wandered off to the loo.

[Neville Street]

I left half a crate of Carling and a couple of blankets in the Dairy Grounds, hopefully they found a good home.

[grumpyhack]

I hate people who abandon perfectly good stuff because they simply can't be arsed to take it home.

It's actually one of the aguments in favour of people going by car. Car people tend to take their stuff home. If you come by bus/coach it is tempting to leave things behind.

I've had the same tent and most of my camping gear for years. I don't leave anything behind and check thoroughly for pegs.

Everything gets a thorough wash and check over and the odd repair when I get home and is packed away ready for the next fest.

Taking when it's not meant to be on offer = theft.

Taking when it's been abandoned and left behind = recycling.

Edited July 2, 2009 by grumpyhack

[Squall Moogle]

Well, if you wait till later in the day, only go for tents and suchlike that are open and if possible ask neighbours you can greatly minimise the risk of inadvertently stealing.

When we were out scavenging my girlfriend and I did quite a few passes of viable aquisitions, out of the one tent that we took down we revisited the area a couple of times and also waited a while to see if anyone would come.

If this is an issue that grinds peoples gears then maybe the festival should force people to take all their camping equipment with them or pack them up and take them to a few recycling points. Or at the very least strongly campaign for people not to leave things.

It was my girlfriends first festival and she was very shocked by just how wasteful people are. She also told me about how she overheard people saying how they had just brought cheap clothes for the festival and would just leave them there.

[benissright]

Apparently your method for determining whether something has been abandoned or not isn't foolproof after all. Hence you would have been a thief in this case, inadvertently or not, which really makes very little difference to the person who had their stuff nicked.

Edited July 2, 2009 by benissright

[markeee]

To be fair, i didnt take anything til about 2pm. At which point we first realised about this scavenging by watching people just wander around and pick things up. The whole thing was new to us. The chairs i took were left out and the gazebo tent pegs were from a gazebo that we had been lying under for about 2 hours. Oh and of course, im a reading regular, you leave your chair out for 5 mins there unattended, and its gone.

[Squall Moogle]

totally agree, so like if we were all asleep, then our gazebo is abandoned?

[Neville Street]

We worked on Monday and our friend packed up our kit and carried it to our workplace (up behind Worthy FM, next to the farm). Luckily our neighbours who we had befriended watched it during trip one, otherwise go knows how much kit we would have "lost".

When we walked out to get the car in to pick up our stuff at about 5pm there was absolutely tons of left behind tents, beds, kit, etc., and we were trying to work out how the hell to legislate for it. My friends sensible idea was some kind of tag/deposit scheme on big items like tents, etc., but difficult to police.

My uber right wing idea was to use the CCTV footage to cross match with the registration photo's and cancel the registration of the lazy twats who leave the stuff behind (or just find them and shoot them!!)

Perhaps a middle ground would be for the organisers to define a specific time, and for Campsite wardens and all of us festival goers to police the time. If they said "no scavenging before 10am (or preferably mid-day), then anyone doing the "oh sorry I thought you left it" would be defined as a thief as it was pre-watershed tatting. I think it could work. And before anyone says "I have a right to tat stuff, but I have to be off site by 8am", I am afraid you can piss off, tatting at 0500 on Monday is thieving in my book.

We stayed on at BD's last year because the car park was carnage. By mid-afternoon there were lots of people scavenging, and we joined in and got ourselves a great windbreak which has done good service on the beach since , but I would not have dreamed of tatting at 0800.

[chuckley]

To be fair, i didnt take anything til about 2pm. At which point we first realised about this scavenging by watching people just wander around and pick things up. The whole thing was new to us. The chairs i took were left out and the gazebo tent pegs were from a gazebo that we had been lying under for about 2 hours. Oh and of course, im a reading regular, you leave your chair out for 5 mins there unattended, and its gone.

[markeee]

yea coz that makes it so much better!!!!!! 2pm is still lunchtime and a busy time leavin the fest!!!! alot either leave 1st thing or very very late to avoid q's for bus and carparks/motorway.

i still dont understand how u can nick a gazebo. u have NO proof said person has gone unless they tell u so. just taking it when u feel like is theft.

u people are just thieves. KARMA is gonna get u lot back, seriously.