PROC Guide to Camping at Electric Picnic

26th Aug 2019

If you’ve decided to leave the sanctity of the People’s Republic of Cork this weekend for the noisy discomfort of a field in Laois and the danger of being nearer to Dublin, then check out our guide to festival tent living:  

Distinguish Your Tent From Others
Experienced festival goers know that positioning a tent in the campsite can make or break your weekend away. If you’ve bought one of those cheap, generic German-supermarket jobs like 90% of those going to Electric Picnic then finding your tent in broad daylight, not to mind in the middle of the night with your beer goggles on, will be a challenge.

This means you could wake up next to complete strangers next morning. That’s grand if it’s some flahbag from Ballycotton or Ballygarvan, but waking up to find some big sweaty, hairy giant from Ballyhaunis breathing 100% alcohol fumes directly from their liver into your face at 6.45am isn’t much craic. Make your tent distinct.

Choose Your Bunk Wisely
If you’re in a tent with more than one friend, be sure to place your sleeping bag far away from the fella who is a renowned early-morning puker. When he gets a dose of the super voms at 10am, hoping he’ll have enough wherewithal to sit up, unzip the tent and stick his neck outside may be wishful thinking. Sleep as far away from his splash zone as you can.  

Creature Comforts
A bed of folded jumpers might seem comfortable when you get back to your tent at 3am, but when you wake up three hours later feeling like you need a double hip replacement as well as a new liver, you’ll wish you had forked out the few bob extra for a good camping mat.

Plug Out
To get a few hours sleep you’ll need to minimise campsite noise, but foam ear plugs are a waste of time – it’s the dense wax ones you want (Boots on Paul Street have them). When your gurning, Dublin neighbours start up a 6am rave you’ll remain in a deep coma while your ‘tent mates’ spend the next three hours lying there in silence composing an angry Facebook post about the lack of security guards in the campsite.  

Isolated Showers
If you haven’t slept in a tent in a while then you may have forgotten about what a dose it is to have to trek across a campsite in the middle of the night or early morning to the toilets (training your bladder to hold six cans for at least six hours so you get a good sleep should be well underway by now).

With pounding heads and weary, wobbly legs, many lazy punters may decide that the outside of your tent looks like a much easier option than a journey to the bog, so what you think is the start of an isolated heavy shower may be a bit more isolated than you think.  

Anxious For Courtin’
Being from Cork, your good looks and the natural charm you exude will have singletons from other counties queuing up to get a piece of you – or as many pieces of you as possible depending on how much gat you both have on board – as soon as they hear the beautiful tones of you and your friends’ carefully crafted accents.

When the festival shuts down for the night, frisky couples will be looking for space in a tent to continue, let’s say, building their relationship. His tent may also be your tent and you may also be in said tent, but at a festival this is rarely a reason for your flatmate to cease courting. Rules are rules: turn over, go back to dreamland and pretend the frantic elbows in the back are those of a Kilkenny defender getting frustrated that you’ve scored 3-10 on him in the 2020 All-Ireland final.

Beware: Here There Be Dubs
This isn’t a pleasant night away on Sherkin Island or a week of civilised camping in Ballylickey. Electric Picnic is riddled with Decco’s from Drumcondra and Tommies from Tallaght who see the last big music festival of the year solely as ‘a business trip’.

Wallets, phones, beers, bags, tents, socks and even your underpants are their target and if they find a tent with a padlock on the zip, it’s like a neon flashing light saying ‘we’ve got valuables in here, bud’ (and you’d be surprised how many Dubs can read these days).

One quick flick of a razor blade to slash your tent and, before you know it, everything you brought to Laois is being passed around at a drug den in Finglas. Keep your valuables on you at all times and sleep with one and a half eyes open.