Rock Werchter

1^st - 5^th July 2010

Rock Werchter is a 4 day music festival in Werchter, Belgium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Werchter

Being summer in Europe we had to take advantage of at least one festival this year. As Glen missed this festival in 2008 by being back in Aus we decided to go to it this year. A group of friends were going so why not join in and go see some awesome bands for cheaper than in the UK and get a holiday overseas as well.

Kieran, me and a few others headed out on Wednesday night on the eurostar (train) to Belgium. It takes just over 2hrs to get to Brussels. We decided to go a day earlier as the price of the morning tickets went up dramatically by the time we went to book. It was cheaper to go the night before and stay in a hostel. Going the night before meant we didn’t have to get up at 4am to catch the eurostar.

Meeting up with the rest of the group (there were 10 of us in total) the next day we caught a train from Brussels to Leuven then from Leuven we caught a bus to Werchter where we then had (I would say) a 2km walk to our camp ground. There was no pre determined area that you had to camp in. We went to one which was close to the festival grounds, although it was still a 15min walk away! Trudgin  g all our camping equipment to the ground we finally made it and started to set up our campsite. It was Thursday and turned out to be a 34 degrees Celsius that day. Once setup it was time for a drink and a chill out in our chairs. The first bands did not start playing until 4pm and it was only 2pm when we had finished setting up.

Come 4pm we wandered down to the festival grounds having a look around and listening to some music it was an awesome way to start the 4 days of music, beer and sunshine. The festival only had 2 stages making it easy to go from stage to stage to see the band you wanted.

The next few days pretty much all went by in the same fashion of getting up around 8-9am or whenever the sun or loud people would wake you. Sit around the camp site till around 2-4pm depending when the band was on we wanted to see. Then come home have a bit of a wash down (no showers so it was all baby wipes or a wet washer) then off to bed around 12-3am.

On the Friday it reached an amazing 42degrees Celsius. This was the day we built a shelter from the sun using a tarpaulin, string and our towels to shade us. You couldn’t really sit under it but you could lay down which was good enough for us. We would only find out the temperature on the way to the festival ground each day. On the Saturday there was some rain but it was mostly nice and warm. It was amazing to have such hot weather. Only prob    lem was at the festival there wasn’t much shade so we had to cram into any shady spot we could. There was no going in any mosh pit for us that day.

On the last day we had a full day in Brussels to spend our time before our 8pm train home. We left the camp site at a comfortable time without any rushing around. We decided to leave our tent behind. It had served us well for Glastonbury (link to old post), [Kieran] Rock Werchter 08 and 2010. We said our good byes and to one of our well serviced sleeping bag which had seen the likes of Turkey (twice), Egypt (twice), the above festivals, and 10 other countries in Europe. Bidding our farewells we left and headed back into Brussels to be a tourist for the afternoon and lazily make our way home.

Some of the highlight bands we saw were: FAITHLESS, MUSE, LA ROUX, SKUNK ANANSIE, GREEN DAY, P!NK, FLORENCE + THE MACHINE, THE TEMPER TRAP, RAMMSTEIN, PEARL JAM, ARCADE FIRE, THEM CROOKED VULTURES, VAMPIRE WEEKEND, EMPIRE OF THE SUN

It was a wonderful way to spend a few days off work, sure there were no showers but you can live with that for some wonderful hot weather and sunshine. Along with great music and hanging with friends.

These are the summer days we love.