Thursday fest steward - registration / training Friday 7pm-3 am Saturday 11ampm-7 p m Sunday 9pm-5.30 am

I was pretty disappointed, cos of the organisation of the work and size of the site meant we missed 70% of it and even when I had some free time I hardly ever saw any interesting stuff . There were lots of acts, but they were almost entirely mediocre. The OK stuff took up about an hour in the entire weekend and nothing was really great. It seemed to be an event for rich stupid people. I couldn't afford to buy anything there food was £5 a paper plate and beer £3 a pint. I guess it wasn't my type of thing; the people there seemed to go out late smoke lots of joints get really drunk and sit around a lot. Seems to me they could have saved £105 by staying at home and doing the same things. Did people go to all that trouble just to sit in a big top and watch movies like Toy Story ? Working late we saw a fair few people had taken enough pills to turn themselves into nutcases

The work was boring just standing in front of a tent we had to work 8 hour shifts, no proper breaks, turn up 15 minutes early at a cabin another 15 minutes walk from the camping and work area as well as queue up for food . I Should have done litter picking.

TEDIOUS I won't go to one of these large fenced festivals again. Even though the high price kept most of the oikes away the extra money didn't provide better entertainment cos it all got used up for security and a huge clean up effort as well as doing everything in an over elaborate way instead of simply . So in effect all you are doing is subsidising the oikes who drop cigarette butts etc. In the smaller green festivals there are no security or litter costs so more money is available for entertainment. Here the site was trashed.

Smaller festivals have a much better friendly atmosphere. There were 27,000 people another 1000 crew and 100s of performers. The atmosphere was much better when all the punters had gone.

All in all not my kind of thing, not my kind of people.

Even though The organizers spent a hell of a lot of money - many things were very good like community liason, security, noise control it should have been in a stadium not in the countryside. A stadium already has the infrastructure like security fencing and doesn't have to be cleaned to virgin standard. The clean up company is called "Leave No Trace" ; a great ideal, but not possible in this case. You start off with a semi-natural state and then you build a temporary city on it. The city exists for 3 days the impact is huge the animals are disturbed for one week either side and intensively during the fest. How can they hunt etc ? Trees/bushes are damaged by heavy vehicles etc. We saw how many 1000s of cigarette butts and plastic glass shards were buried in the grass. We tried to get them all, but it's impossible and also rubbish can get itself into inaccessable places easier then you can get it out. Even if the nature mostly recovers in 6 months the shards and butts will still affect them

Monday - despite finishing shift atfter 5.30am (and to bed at 7am) we had to go to the office before midday to get our deposits back.

I switched to litter picking team. I need to find projects with more serious mature people I earnt money but was mostly bored. Got a cold through overworking

Went back to Wales to the Brecon Beacons ....