Scotland's biggest festival is still one of the parties of the year (part 3)

Sunday morning was a brand new and dry day though - and a relatively early start for us as we had a date with Be Charlotte who was opening the T Break stage. The talented teenager was one of 16 acts to win a slot on the stage over the weekend, beating off competition from over a thousand other acts from across Scotland. And she totally owned it, as my twelve year old would say.

We saw her at Belladrum on the Free Range stage there last year and over the last twelve months she has grown in confidence and blossomed into a real potential star. She has a beautiful and powerful voice, a great attitude and a genuine love and enthusiasm for what she's doing – and all of that shone through in her performance, prompting one veteran music journalist to tip her as one to watch.

Dundee band The View had secured themselves an afternoon slot on the main stage for their ninth appearance at what singer Kyle Falconer has described as “the best festival in the world”. They were introduced by Scottish writer and actor Greg McHugh aka Gary Tank Commander. Despite pockets of mosh pits, most notably during Superstar Tradesman, it wasn't the liveliest of performances until Same Jeans really got the fans going.

Scottish band Idlewild were also back at T, this time for the ninth time. They had an afternoon slot on the Radio 1 stage, and were followed by another T returnee, Catfish & The Bottlemen, who put in a typically energetic performance.

I love Paloma Faith. I love her voice, her music, her style, her energy, her sense of humour and I loved her set which included Stone Cold Sober, Picking Up The Pieces, Just Can't Rely On You and the haunting Only Love Can Hurt Like This.

One of the great things about TITP is that it gives you the opportunity to see so many big name bands and stars pretty much on your doorstep. I would probably never pay to go and see half the bands we saw this weekend but see them I have and my musical education is all the richer for it.

And so it was with the Stereophonics. Not a band I would pay to see on their own, but they have always been a favourite with the T crowd and the love-in is a mutual one as lead singer Kelly Jones commented on the energy they were getting back from the crowd and said that it wouldn't matter where T in the Park was held, it was the kids that made it.

Their main stage set attracted another packed crowd, rocking out to Too Many Sandwiches, Jones' distinctive voice leading numerous sing-alongs to favourites such as I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio, Maybe Tomorrow, Have A Nice Day, Just Looking, The Bartender and The Thief and finishing with Dakota.

We decided to bail out despite the appeal of headliners of  The Prodigy on the Radio 1 stage, and also missing Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, in a (successful) attempt to avoid any traffic issues leaving the site, and we weren't alone with a fair few folk also heading home early.

So, it was a mixed year for TITP this year. There were certainly moments of magic, of brilliance, of euphoria and many happy memories for many people.

Plus points were the line up and the fact that Scotland's biggest festival is still one of THE parties of the year. The bands all seemed to love TITP 2015, with many coming back this year for the third, fourth and even seventh and eighth time, paying homage to what they almost universally hail as the best crowds – Kasabian guitarist Serge Pizzorno summing it up neatly with a T-shirt emblazoned with the legend 'radge' for their set.

The stages are all within relatively close distance of each other – it is a much more compact site than Balado was – which makes it easy to find your way around.

But with that comes a different set of problems. Whereas at Balado you could almost pick the festival experience you had, everything was very much more intense and in your face at Strathallan. More toilets, and preferably ones that don't leak, would be a good starting point to improving the whole experience for many and should get rid of the smell of urine that had permeated the site by Sunday.

And despite the relative close proximity of the stages, and the smaller site, there still seemed to be a lot more walking involved in this year's event. The walk to the campsites were a good twenty minutes around the outside of the area for example. Longer in the mud. And the dark.

The police presence this year seemed less than in previous years, perhaps a reflection of the impact cutbacks have had on that organisation.

Over the course of the whole weekend though, lots of the stewards were really brilliant, trying their hardest to help out where they could, apologising when they couldn't and doing their best to get someone who could. One steward I spoke to on the Sunday afternoon had just been told he was on for a 17 hour shift. The conditions the stewards had to endure weren't ideal either and people should all remember, we're all of us just human.

The transport links to and from the site are the biggie, and there seemed to be no Plan B for when it went wrong. It's no use blaming kids for trying to walk home – or even just to their parents cars stuck in the traffic jams - when they are cold, wet and tired, or even saying that years of experience at Balado meant that the T audience is used to reasonably short times getting out, which isn't the norm for other events.

It did go wrong in parts this weekend, so let's make it better next time – maybe shuttle bus everyone away from the site to car parks and dedicated bus stops somewhere else, a technique that has been employed to good effect at other big events such as the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games for example.

It should also be remembered that there were problems at Balado – the eight hour tailbacks on the motorway in 2007, the torrential rain in 2012 to mention just a couple. The difference is that the organisers had had 18 years to sort out the problems and turn T in the Park into the well-oiled machine. TITP is the fifth largest city in Scotland and moving that size of population and all the related infrastructure was a huge logistical undertaking that was unlikely to go completely smoothly in it's first year?

The location is stunning, absolutely beautiful, and a great advert for Scotland and in particular Perth and Kinross – even if the rolling green fields had turned into a massive quagmire by Monday morning.

The unifying power, euphoria and joy generated by a shared communal spirit and love of live music was undoubtedly there for many, many festie goers but equally, for whatever reason, it seemed to have gone by the wayside for many people at T in the Park this year.

I really hope that enough people have the energy to make it work again next year and for many years to come. It is important to the Scottish music scene, to the festival scene, and to the thousands of people for whom it is an annual pilgrimage.

If it is to stay at Strathallan, and my own feeling is that an awful lot of money has already been invested in trying to get that site to work, then I think the attendance numbers have to be reduced.

Judging by the comments online, that may well happen whether the organisers want it to or not.

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