Is travelling home between Leeds Festival volunteer shifts realistic?

[GrandmasCat]

I am volunteering at Leeds Festival for the duration of it. Think some sort of first aid/medical volunteering so the shifts are long, some are in the middle of the night but I will always have at least 12 hours free between each shift.

If you have volunteered at Leeds Festival, would you say is it feasible to think that I can go back home between shifts? I don’t want to camp but if volunteers share the same queue to enter as everyone, I am worried that it make take few hours of queuing both getting in and getting out after each shift?

I don’t know about the logistics of the festival itself but I can imagine it would be a pain. Even if you don’t need to queue each day (there’ll be a crew gate) you’ll be battling traffic, one-way systems etc. Although I think Leeds sell day tickets don’t they? So there might be a shuttle.

Having worked and volunteered at lots of other festivals, I’ve never known someone stay off site and I’d say it’s very unusual. Not sure if there’s an expectation to stay though.

It would depend on where you live. We live Headingley and when my stepson went 7 years ago, he came home to shower

They have own areas

It sort of depends where "home" is.

Depends on where you live, surely?

Oh Thank you for the info! I am not that far from it but in previous years I have seen the crazy queues that cause the A64 to be crammed with queuing cars, not to say it took me 2 hours to retrieve my teenager from there a few years ago.

I understand that crews have a different access gate and parking but if we all are coming from the A64 we all, volunteers and visitors, will be queueing in the same queue and then it won’t be doable…

When DC worked shifts there, they had access to routes in and out that the public didn't.

Only if you live in Leeds I’d say.

Only if you’re in walking distance I reckon

If you need to use that route then it sounds like a nightmare. There’ll be crew gates in and out but unless you can use local knowledge to get a sneaky way through, you’ll eventually join the main traffic.

Depends if you are cycling/ motorcycle or car. The first 2 perhaps

Ok people, just to clarify, I live near the site, I have seen the horrendous queues that form in the A64 during the festival every year, so I’m used to go through other road or back lanes to avoid the traffic. What I am specifically trying to find out is if there is a secret back entry exclusively for people working to the crew/volunteers parking area (I am driving).

My volunteer coordinator has told me about how coming just for your shift is “absolutely doable” in other festivals but he has never done Leeds, so he says he has no idea. So if you have volunteered or worked at Leeds, I would like to hear more as I really don’t fancy spending the week sleeping in a tent when the work itself is already so demanding.

Once the festival has started you should find traffic is not too bad in and out of the car parks - there will probably be restrictions and road closures in place that mean you can't turn a particular way and have to follow a small diversion, but the worst traffic will probably be at the end with people queuing to get onto the site to pick up gestival goers

Thanks for that! My only experience of trying to get close to the gates was on picking up my son. The queues were so bad he ended up sending me a ThreeWords text to meet him at a field more than a mile away…

It is reassuring to hear I have seen the worst of it!