Sinks and water

[pouxin]

What was with the major reduction in sinks/taps this year? Whole blocks of sinks had been removed in some areas, and replaced with hand sanitizer units. One set of toilets I went to had nothing (!!) This irritated me for several reasons:

1) It was SUPER HOT. Ok, they won't have predicted this, but at a festival which is outside (so will have reasonable sun/heat exposure even if p*ssing it down) you *need* to keep hydrated. You can't drink hand sanitizer! I think it's a bit irresponsible to limit peoples' access to drinking water at an outdoor event.

2) Sometimes, particularly after using a toilet, you want to WASH your hands so they are CLEAN, not just sanitize whatever unsavoury substances might be on them (leaving yourself dirty)

3) Having nothing at all available to clean your hands with after using a toilet is just an invitation to the spread of infection - as they keep pointing out to us in the Wateraid adverts!

4) It's bloody annoying queueing for 18 hours to clean your teeth. Granted, I've always had to queue to use the taps at Glasto, but with the reduction in sinks this year it reached epic proportions.

OK, rant over. Still had an excellent time :-)

But please put all the sinks back next year!

[glastofun]

Fair points I think. Also need taps with no sinks under them so you can stick your head under to wash your hair.

[18Alex18]

We gave up on getting water several times because the queue just wasn't worth it.

[Josie's Cat]

Yeah there could have been more, but we did ok, just stopped at every point, and filled up three bottles.

Then we found a big container, and lugged that around, filled up a few pople's bottles from it at the Glade too, agree there should have been more taps dotted around, like at the back of the stages and so on, not just at the toilets that were a bit trek. But the queues did move pretty fast, it was never too bad.

[Bluefire]

The queues would move a lot faster if people didn't do stuff like clean their teeth at the sinks. I'm sorry, how hard is it to use a bottle of water & do it at your tent? There's nothing more annoying than queuing up in a morning to fill up your container because you're desperately thirsty only to have to watch people stand there for ages scrubbing away. Washing your hair I can understand slightly more (don't do it myself - dry shampoo & a hat all the way) but plenty of people manage it at their tents with a bucket & if you're that desperate to do it go queue for the showers!

[Josie's Cat]

With the teeth cleaning thing, just walk up and ask to use the tap whilst the person is scrubbing. That's what I did, silly to just stand and wait and get pissed off - same with hair washing.

There were a couple of teenagish girls, maybe 12 or 13, taking ages using both sinks carefully washing arms and legs and then hands and then the same bits again and again - but they were only young, had no clue about holding people up, I just asked if they minded if I used the sink and they moved to one sink, the queue kept moving, and then they lent me some shower gel.

I don't think people do anything much on purpose to cause a big wait, mostly it's just not being aware. I did see lots of people hair washing or teeth brushing gesture to the next person to use the free tap.

[LondonTom]

With teeth brushing, I brushed my teeth in the que, so as I got there I spat out, washed my mouth, splashed my face and wet my hair then filled a water bottle and moved on not hard. and used wet wipes to clean myself, up in dairy ground it seemed absolutely awful (although for the first bit of the busy period, walking down to the other taps worked a treat, as loads of people decided to camp in the fire lane there so no one really bothered to go to it unless, they saw others ). Think people just need to be more aware of the que around them!

[pie_and_a_pint]

Fair points I think. Also need taps with no sinks under them so you can stick your head under to wash your hair.

[TokiDoki]

I filled up my water bottles late at night when there was no queue in preparation for the morning.

There were definately less sinks, the hand sanitizer gel is good but it should be in addition to taps, not as a replacement.

Also, why do they hammer home the message about wasting water so much but then put in weird taps that spray high pressure water everwhere? For every bottle I filled up I probably wasted 2 or 3 more bottles spraying all over me and the general area!

[tjefffrench]

Yeah, it is annoying to stand in the Q feeling so thirsty watching someone wash their hair

But how tasty was the water at glasto? I drank so much!

[pie_and_a_pint]

But how tasty was the water at glasto? I drank so much!

[Phil-itfc]

water was a godsend with the weather I liked to stick my hat or shirt under a tap to cool off, but never took longer than 30 seconds to sort myself out. as others have said people washing hair and even there feet in the sinks was rank and unfair. credit to the campsite staff in the new campsite they were directing people into different ques depending if they were washing or filling.