The Festival Season is well underway, with Glastonbury and T in the Park in the bag and Creamfields and Leeds festival still to come.
Whether you’ve already had your drunken sway in the mud or you’ve got it coming up, we’ve collected a list of must-have gadgets you can bring along to improve your experience and enthral fellow festival goers.
Ready to eat camping meals (Stove optional)
Okay, so this one isn’t technically a gadget. However, when you’re stuck in a field and you need something to soak up the alcohol there are few better options than a proper camping meal. Try to buy wet, sealed pouches as opposed to freeze-dried food which has to be heated with boiling water.
Brands like Wayfayrer make ready-to-eat food that can be enjoyed cold, but if you’d like a more wholesome meal you can invest in a cheap camping stove and heat it up in a pan.
Selfie Stick
An often-hated result of popular culture, Selfie Sticks are unarguably handy when it comes to taking group shots on your smartphone. They’re the perfect way to catch moments with your friends whilst avoiding the awkwardness of asking someone you’ve never met, ‘can you take this picture?’
We’d advise a fairly cheap model as you may end up breaking it. A remote selfie stick from Hawkin’s Bazaar lets you snap with a button on the stick – so no fiddling about with timers.
Portable power pack
One of the main issues you encounter at a festival is running out of charge on your electronics. While some like to rough it and take a replacement phone, you could always purchase a portable power pack to help keep you charged no matter where you are. Simply charge it up, take it with you and use it to charge your gear.
Gizoo have a dual power bank which has a 6600 mAh capacity, enough to recharge an iPhone 4S four times. Great for long weekend festivals.
Scrubba Washbag
Longer festivals mean dirty clothes having to be re-worn. Washing up can be a chore, especially when you’ve got no sink and people are competing over any washing areas. Instead, bring along a Scrubba washbag and come away with clean clothes.
Designed whilst founder Ash Newland was on a trip up Mt Kilimanjaro, the Scrubba bags are simple: just pop your clothes in with some water and scrub them over the internal washboard. They’ll come away clean in 30 seconds. Perfect for long, muddy camping trips. In Britain, that’s basically all camping trips.
Go Pro camera
If you want to capture your experience in unforgettable quality, you could do a lot worse than a Go Pro. Any model will out-perform your smart phone and carry the added bonus of durability. Designed for action sports, Go Pro’s are small cameras that let you capture video footage of all your festival antics. Grab an older model for the best value.