Here is the latest blog by our student graduates. 

 

 

               

               

 

                               Kierran Allardice is a journalism student at Glasgow Caledonian University. He has a love for sport and passion for statistics.

 

 

 

Thursday past myself, my friends and a few thousand other eager festival goers descended on Strathallan Castle – the new found home of T in the Park.

By now you’ll have read the papers and scoured the internet to see nothing but bad press for the festival’s opening year at its new home.

Back at Ballado the queue before and the walk to your chosen campsite were probably the two worst aspects of that site yet at Strathallan they were probably two of the best. We queued outside for no longer than 45 minutes to an hour and the walk to our campsite, Blue 8 (sadly, no more Purple 4) took half that time.

And so the festival began, as did the problems…

The layout is without a doubt one of the biggest issues that has arisen from TITP this year. Unless you were one of the lucky ones who managed to nab a camping spot in the pink area right next door to the arena then a trek awaited you before you could even think of seeing your favourite acts on stage. Not only that, but the pathways between the arena and the campsites were like bottlenecks meaning at the end of every night queueing and crushing would ensue until people had the bright idea to knock over a few fences thus giving everyone more space to move.

Even in the arena layout was a huge problem – it should not take at least ten minutes to get from the Main Stage to the Radio 1 Stage yet sadly it did, and that was at a quiet time. But between popular acts things got worse and more crushing and queueing ensued between the site’s two biggest stages as the time it took to make it from one to another doubled.

Now don’t get me wrong as a festival goer I didn’t mind that the security at the event was er…lacking to say the very least. I didn’t mind that on arrival instead of searching my bag they only asked if I had any glass on me before letting me move on. I didn’t mind that in the seven or eight trips I made to the arena I didn’t get searched once making the smuggling of alcohol all that bit easier. But thinking about the sheer size and magnitude of the festival its security should have been a bit tighter.

And then there was the lack of staff on hand and signposts to help you as we searched for our bus home after the festival but you’ll have read enough about the chaos leaving the festival already.

We all expected hiccups of some sort at TITP this year I just don’t think we expected them on the scale they were.

Don’t let the previous 400 words fool you…I had a brilliant festival – the music was great, the camping was enjoyable, the company was wonderful and the alcohol did flow. It’s just the organisation of the festival that left a lot to be desired.