Nowhere near enough toilets provided 2024

[Paul R 60]

Great festival with loads of lovely food stalls and retailers plus a superb line-up of performers. What a shame that the organisers yet again have totally underestimated the number of toilet facilities required. Everywhere people were queueing up to use the toilets - for up to 30 mins wait at times first thing in the morning in the camping fields. This would be followed by a 45 minute wait for the showers but I didn’t mind that because they were good and free. PLEASE - more of our favourite festival loos next year - twice as many are needed.

[Skip997]

Way behind the times, the introduction of proper nice compost loos is long overdue 

 

All porta loos are horrible 

[spg]

Composters are great, but folk don't use the sawdust I find. If they did, they'd be even better, with a great poo crew looking after them. Some other alternative urinals would be great, to help lessen the cubicle queues too. Andy loos do a great job in general though I find

[GNR]

It was quieter this year. Queues were nothing on the year before.

 

it's usually quicker to stroll up to the tiny tea tent and avoid all the queues at the bottom of the hill. Did this several times with my daughter & never normally more than a couple of people in line 

[ShuMart]

On 9/4/2024 at 10:25 PM, GNR said:

It was quieter this year. Queues were nothing on the year before.

 

it's usually quicker to stroll up to the tiny tea tent and avoid all the queues at the bottom of the hill. Did this several times with my daughter & never normally more than a couple of people in line 

 

Good idea, shall remember to tell the other half to do that next year

[Quark]

Yeah, campsite loos are always busy.  Never queued anywhere else for the loo all weekend as far as I can remember

[Quark]

On 9/3/2024 at 9:36 AM, Skip997 said:

Way behind the times, the introduction of proper nice compost loos is long overdue 

 

All porta loos are horrible 

Agree in general, but I think it's come up in discussion before about BDs and part of the problem is probably the terrain.  Quite hilly for a small site, so not as much space for the footprint needed for composters maybe?

[CanWeRest]

It's a shame to hear that about the toilets. When I went a few years ago they were fine, but I think they raised the capacity a couple of times after COVID. If you do that, you gotta get the extra loos 😢 

[guypjfreak]

More loos

[Skip997]

On 12/1/2024 at 8:43 PM, guypjfreak said:

More loos

Proper loos

 

Not that attend any more 

[guypjfreak]

Unless it's a blinding line up I'm missing it... Glastonbury is enough nowadays 

[CanWeRest]

10 hours ago, guypjfreak said:

Unless it's a blinding line up I'm missing it... Glastonbury is enough nowadays 

 

BD have pretty much got 3 lineups on rotation now. Always good, just a bit samey after a while 😑

[Skip997]

21 hours ago, CanWeRest said:

 

BD have pretty much got 3 lineups on rotation now. Always good, just a bit samey after a while 😑

Yeah this is how they operate. I used to be involved in designing the program. 
 

Anyway it’s getting duller by the year and more of an “old duffers” event. They need to freshen it up somehow, but I doubt they care: 

[CanWeRest]

5 hours ago, Skip997 said:

Yeah this is how they operate. I used to be involved in designing the program. 
 

Anyway it’s getting duller by the year and more of an “old duffers” event. They need to freshen it up somehow, but I doubt they care: 

 

The old duffers like the familiar and predictability 😹 but I fear it does spell out a steady decline for the event.

[Skip997]

11 hours ago, CanWeRest said:

 

The old duffers like the familiar and predictability 😹 but I fear it does spell out a steady decline for the event.

Yeah, will be the death of it

[incident]

15 hours ago, CanWeRest said:

The old duffers like the familiar and predictability 😹 but I fear it does spell out a steady decline for the event.

 

Given that it was always intended to be "the Levellers Festival", I don't think there's really much scope to change the demographic and go for a younger crowd.

 

With Levellers winding down as a band, I think that the Festival hits a natural end pretty soon rather than limping on. Maybe as soon as 2026 being the final one. If not then surely by the end of the decade.

[Nobody Interesting]

Speaking as 'an old duffer' we no longer go to BD as we found it to be very 'samey'. We did our last one in 2023 and yes it was good but we just never felt excited by it.

 

Bearded Theory on the other hand changes, adapts, excites and all in bucket loads whilst still have some of the same each year. We book tickets for that the day they come out and plan to keep doing so til we are older old duffers

[CanWeRest]

19 hours ago, incident said:

 

Given that it was always intended to be "the Levellers Festival", I don't think there's really much scope to change the demographic and go for a younger crowd.

 

With Levellers winding down as a band, I think that the Festival hits a natural end pretty soon rather than limping on. Maybe as soon as 2026 being the final one. If not then surely by the end of the decade.

 

It could go the other way, I suppose. If The Levellers break up, some members might focus more energy on the festival and scouting fresher bands? Or maybe they'll all go back to their mansions 😂

 

I used to work with someone who tours with the Levellers, and they said that despite all their equality preaching, they always had the best wine on their fancy tour bus lol. 

[Skip997]

On 12/8/2024 at 2:12 PM, Nobody Interesting said:

Speaking as 'an old duffer' we no longer go to BD as we found it to be very 'samey'. We did our last one in 2023 and yes it was good but we just never felt excited by it

Was my last one as well, but only under extreme peer pressure. It’s definitely very “samey” or in other words “dull as f**k”. 

[CanWeRest]

If they can get someone else of note to headline, maybe it's time for The Levellers to take a backseat? Or would that alienate the festival's core fan base?

[incident]

2 hours ago, CanWeRest said:

If they can get someone else of note to headline, maybe it's time for The Levellers to take a backseat? Or would that alienate the festival's core fan base?

 

Honestly? I'm can't see how they could pull it off. There's enough (probably a majority) of the BDs crowd that are really only there for Levellers and wouldn't be interested in anything else (or perhaps more fairly, would see the turning of the page as being a suitable time for themselves to move on to new things). So without Levellers you'd need to replace a majority of the crowd which is a tough ask. Probably can't do it gradually in this case, and would need a pretty special lineup to do it in a single year.

 

Can't personally see a scenario where BDs exists without Levellers as an anchor (using that word in both positive and negative senses).

[CanWeRest]

15 hours ago, incident said:

 

Honestly? I'm can't see how they could pull it off. There's enough (probably a majority) of the BDs crowd that are really only there for Levellers and wouldn't be interested in anything else (or perhaps more fairly, would see the turning of the page as being a suitable time for themselves to move on to new things). So without Levellers you'd need to replace a majority of the crowd which is a tough ask. Probably can't do it gradually in this case, and would need a pretty special lineup to do it in a single year.

 

Can't personally see a scenario where BDs exists without Levellers as an anchor (using that word in both positive and negative senses).

 

Probably true. I could definitely see another festival shouldering into Escot Park though. It's a brilliant site.

[Skip997]

21 hours ago, CanWeRest said:

If they can get someone else off note to headline, maybe it's time for The Levellers to take a backseat? Or would that alienate the festival's core fan base?

Never going to happen, to much ego and maybe would alienate as you say. FFS they even shut down the other 2 largest venues to try and force you to watch them. 
 

Not as bad as it used to be re core fan base. In the early days the majority of punters wouldn’t even bother turning up until Sunday afternoon 

[CanWeRest]

Good for the toilet situation, I suppose 😸