Benicassim Day Four // A Survival Guide

Simplicity abounds at festivals, getting back to nature, taking life easy. In the heatwave at this year’s Shoreditch-on-Sea Festival, daytime activities were distilled to a bare minimum. Like lying prone in a day long stupour, before drinking copious amounts of ice-cold beer in the setting sun to regain some salubrious level of conciousness. 

Benicassim was just that hot. Average temperatures hovering at 35º in the day, plumetting to an icey 34.5º at night. Brrrr. Those not in possession of card or keys to hotel room or private apartment, with the treasured bounty of air con-fuelled blissful sleep that lay within, had to consider other options.

Going the whole festival without sleep was one. 4 days? No problem. Such intrepid FiBers are usually identifiable on days 3 and 4 by a maniacal grin and thousand yard stare set permanently on their crazed faces, and an inability to make any sense whatsoever, except to wastebins and other inanimate objects, with whom they could oft be found in lengthy conversation. 

For others the campsite ice-cold showers suddenly become the meeting place re rigeur, a place to let it all hang out - one inventive group of festival-goers even set up a table and chairs in the showers, for their pre-gig chinwag and shindig. 

In such conditions, however “breathable” your tent may claim, it’s more likely to resemble an industrial sized boil-in-the-bag, gently poaching anything inside. Many festival-goers threw caution to the wind and slept outside, at the mercy of drunken revelers passing by and a host of biting insects. 

Other, more circumspect souls - Noize included - adopted the common practice of Toe-Airing, keeping tent-bound bodies that little bit cooler by leaving toes to wiggle outside, caressed by the coastal breeze and gently crisped in the late morning sun. 

Words by Neill Higgins

Photos by Melanie Manneville

A conservative Toe-Airer

An intrepid outside sleeper

Noize and The Ladysounds ponder a rare moment of cloudy respite