Recently I made a blog post about how to survive the hot weather at music festivals.
I thought that it made sense to follow this up with a ‘how to survive the wet weather at festivals’ blog post too.
Since this is the UK and we have a lot of music festival, and we have a lot of wet weather.
Ah yes, Rain – The other extreme of festival weather, and some people may say the worse extreme.
You can bet that those people haven’t suffered from heatstroke, but anyway.
Here are 5 tips on how to stay dry at a rainy festival, or at least how to deal a bit better with the inevitable downpour at your next music festival.
1. Waterproofs or poncho
Let’s be honest here; ponchos don’t look cool.
No-one is going to think of you as a fashion guru for finding a way to look cool in a poncho, because it’s impossible.
However, waterproofs are definitely more fashionable than being soaked to the skin and looking like a drowned rat.
Waterproofs and ponchos are not expensive, they fold up well and can fit into even the smallest backpack.
Make sure you take one because you never know when the weather’s going to turn and suddenly try to change the music festival site into a new ocean.
2. Towels
As a very wise childhood hero once said; Don’t forget to bring a towel!
Or for the older readers, as Douglas Adams pointed out, bringing a towel is a universally good idea.
“If you want to survive out here, you’ve got to know where your towel is.”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
If you get caught in the train, you can at least dry yourself off when you get back to camp.
And even if you don’t experience bad weather, a towel can be good to lay on the ground if you don’t have a chair, a way to clean up spills inside the tent, or even folding up for an extra pillow at night.
TL;DR – Towels are great and you should always take one with you.
3. Put up your tent properly.
If you go to a music festival, then bring a double skinned one.
A single-skinned tent is going to do absolutely nothing if (and when) it rains.
In regular rain however, a double skinned tent will prevent water from leaking into your tent, but only if the tent is put up properly.
If the two layers are touching, then the water will leak through from the outside into the inside and you need to know how to stop that from happening.
The guide ropes are there to not just to keep the tent grounded in windy weather, and they don’t exist just to make an obstacle course for drunken revellers.
The other reason that guide Ropes exit is to help keep the two layers of the tent separate by literally pulling them apart.
The guide rope doesn’t need to be stretched out as far as it can go, it just needs to pull away from the inner section of the tent.
4. Spare Clothes
If you drive, keep a spare set of clothes in your car. Because, well, you never know!
Maybe you’ll fall into a gigantic puddle 5 seconds after getting to the arena!
Maybe the first band you see will involve a huge mosh pit and beer shower.
Maybe your tent will flood on the first night because of a gaping hole you didn’t notice earlier.
The point is that anything can happen and you may find yourself in dire need of an entirely new set of clean, dry clothes.
A spare set of clothes is always a good idea.
And this isn’t just advice for those people who drive to festivals either!
Yes if you drive, you can keep the spare set in your boot as that’s probably the safest (driest) place.
However, If you get public transport to the festival, just be sure to keep your set of spare clothes in a sealed plastic bag and leave it closed until actually needed.
Oh, and I mean a FULL set of clothes: Underwear, shirt, trousers and shoes.
If you get soaked to the skin and you go put on a nice dry set of clothes, just imagine how AWFUL it would feel to then have to put your feet back into the dripping wet trainers again!
5. No jeans
If you went to Scouts or Guides growing up, then you will have had this message drilled into your head for years – don’t ever wear jeans if weather may be a problem.
Jeans are like a sponge for water and are very difficult to dry.
They also seem to get 4x heavier when soaked and stuck together when wet.
It is certainly more difficult to enjoy the live music when you have stiff, wet, heavy fabric clinging to your legs like a dying octopus.
Wrap Up
Wet weather can have a devastating effect on your festival experience.
You always hear about people leaving festivals early because of the wet weather, but you don’t often hear about people going home early because it was too sunny out!
Just plan a bit more and you should be fine. Take spares, take waterproofs and make sure you know how to put up a tent so that it doesn’t leak as you’re trying to sleep off a hangover.
