Summer is (slowly) coming around once again, and soon people will begin to turn their thoughts toward holidays, daytrips - and the summer music festival circuit.

SaveAFewBob want our readers to be able to get the best value for money possible when attending festivals this year, so we’ve put together this guide on how to let your hair down without having to remortgage the house.

Oxygen and Electric Picnic

The two largest festivals in Ireland this summer will be Oxygen and Electric Picnic. Oxygen is more of a straight-up music festival, whereas Electric Picnic sells itself more as a music, arts and cultural festival. Weekend tickets for each event come in at around the €240 mark. While this price isn’t that cheap compared to some music festivals on the continent, €240 isn’t too bad for a full three days of entertainment.

But of course, the ticket price is only the beginning of the expense involved while attending a festival. Unless you’re a real die-hard, you’ll have to provide yourself with some kind of shelter for the duration, you’ll have to feed yourself for three days and there’s simply getting to the actual venue. So here are a few tips to rein in ferstival-related spending to some degree.

Tents

First and foremost, you’ll need some sort of a roof over your head to keep the worst of the rain off. There’s no point in spending a mint on a fancy tent that’s only going to get destroyed over the cost of your debauched weekend, so if you’re into camping and have your own lightweight, siliconised-outer shell ergonomic masterpiece of a tent, maybe leave it at home. Camping shops usually start stocking cheap tents at the beginning of May to cater to festival goers, as do Dunnes, Lidl and Aldi. Tents start from as little as €20 for a 2-man tent and while these tents aren’t of the best quality, chances are that you’ll abandon it at the end of the weekend anyway. And maybe put a flag or some other identifying feature on your tent - it will make it an awful lot easier to find in the middle of the night.

Clothing

Music festivals are about having fun, not looking glamorous. Bring old clothes that you won’t be too worried about ruining. And invest in a pair of wellies and a poncho or a rain jacket and trousers - only a few euro of expense, and well worth it in terms of comfort.

Food and Drink

If you ate and drank exclusively from the stalls at the festivals for the entire weekend, you’d be stony broke by the end of it. Why not bring a disposable barbeque and have a cook out in the campsite - great craic, and you won’t be shelling out seven euro for a burger.

As to drink, Electric Picnic have been running a very handy service for the last couple of years. Each ticketholder can buy beer online at the on-site off-licence in advance of travelling down. They only charge standard off-licence prices, and it means that you can be drinking nice cold cans for the entire weekend, rather than paying through the nose for pints at the bars or drinking lukewarm cans of beer for the second half of the festival.

Hygiene

Most venues provide hot showers for festival-goers (sometimes free of charge, sometimes not); however, as these tend to have enormous queues, you may have to lower your standards and make do with a quick lick with a baby wipe instead. And be sure to bring hand sanitizer (you definitely don’t want to forget that). And of course, copious amounts of toilet paper - you wouldn’t want to be caught short on that count, either.

And don’t forget to bring sun cream - sounds like wishful thinking, I know, but a friend of your correspondent was sent home from work the Monday following a festival when he was so badly sunburnt that he could barely open his eyes - you have been warned.

Tags: entertainment alternatives, holiday ideas, money saving tips

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.