Reading festival overcomes weather
Carling Weekend: Reading and Leeds festivals
Tuesday, 21, Aug 2007 03:21
Some camping areas at this year's Reading festival have been closed after the event organisers described the land as "unusable".
However, extra camping in the car park areas has been made available to compensate for sites B, C and D in the Green car park being out of action.
Green site A is looking a little precarious, while Brown E and F are described as being "very, very wet".
Camping areas at Reading are named Green, Yellow, Brown or White and have various lettered sub-fields.
In a message posted on the festival's website, organiser Melvin Benn said: "It has been a very difficult month. When we got on site on July 25th, Green camps A, B, C and D were waist high in water from the floods, yellow camp F, G, H and I were over 3ft deep in water.
"To counter these areas of land that we have lost, what was Orange car park has become a campsite. It is in good condition - but it does mean that all of the car parking that was in Orange will now be redirected to white where we have ample car parking space."
He added that making the festival happen had been a "challenge", but that help from the Environment Agency and Reading borough council had meant the water level could be lowered considerably.
"I always said the festival was more important than the weather," Mr Benn said.
"The weather forecast for the weekend is actually quite good - too late to dry the land but at least we can enjoy some sun."
Acts at this weekend's Reading festival include Razorlight, Kings of Leon, Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Smashing Pumpkins, Bloc Party and Interpol.