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Mud, music and miles of tailbacks – that about sums up this year’s V Festival.
Today, as the last of the 85,000 or so revellers left Staffordshire’s Weston Park, local roads were brought to a standstill for hours.
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One of the muddiest Vs ever due to rain resulted in a busy four days for the emergency services. West Midlands Ambulance Service was called out 90 times yesterday alone, mainly for slips, trips and falls. Actress Jennifer Ellison managed to weather the storm in fancy wellies. Since Thursday, paramedics have dealt with 160 incidents, including one man who had to be airlifted to hospital with a broken jaw after being elbowed by a fellow dancer.
Seventy-four festival-goers were arrested by officers from Staffordshire Police and more than 139 cautioned. The majority of offences were drug-related.
The rain and mud caused problems across the park, with pathways transformed into mudbaths, tents sliding away and revellers coated top-to-toe in sludge. The mass exodus from the car parks and campsites began last night after headliners Muse, Prodigy and Ian Brown finished their sets. But a car crash on the A5 towards Shrewsbury meant only one exit was open and festival-goers were left staring at brake lights for more than three hours.
Today, there was around 1.5 miles of slow-moving traffic along the M54 and roads were clogged along the A41 and at Gailey Island.
But despite the mud and mayhem, this year’s festival still produced some of the finest performances in V’s history. Headliners The Verve and Muse both attracted tens of thousands of fans to the main stage on Saturday and Sunday respectively. The Chemical Brothers, Stereophonics, Kaiser Chiefs and Duffy, Lostprophets and The Sugababes were all well received. But it was Amy Winehouse who stole the headlines – for all the wrong reasons. After keeping the crowd waiting for more than 20 minutes, the 24-year-old stumbled on to the main stage on Saturday for a shambolic mumble through Back to Black, Valerie and Rehab.
A small number of tickets for V 2009 go on sale tomorrow from 10am on the official website.
A start on removing more than 400 tons of rubbish is expected to be made this afternoon for Weston Park to reopen on Thursday.
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