It’s three long years since Electric Picnic last graced the Stradbally estate, in Co Laois. But that Covid-induced hiatus doesn’t feel as long as the journey from the red car park to the campsites. Dressed largely in cycling shorts and T-shirts, the crowds traipse from their overloaded cars to the festival entrance.
With the almost uniform-like attire, they look as if they’re participating in an organised sport, though one which features more trolleys and cans than any competition that has ever featured in the Olympics.
“I can’t do it any more,” one woman says, lugging a rucksack on her back while holding a sleeping bag, a tent and camping chairs.
“You’re grand. Don’t be dramatic,” her friend, who is carrying only a backpack and a bag of cans, replies.
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A man interrupts them both. “This is my second trip. You can do it.”
Ah, there’s nothing like a bit of sportsmanship.
At noon, Aine Whelan and Aisling Finlay, who are 19 and first-time attendees, reward themselves for surviving the journey with some lukewarm cans.
“It was a very long trek. My back was killing me. We had to stop, like, five times, and then we got lost, like, another four times. We didn’t know where we were going,” Finlay says as they relax in camping chairs outside their perfectly pitched tent.
“Putting up the tent has been the easiest part so far. We even practised it at home,” says Whelan.
Others are finding their tents harder to pitch.
“I think we might have f***ed it,” say two friends in the Jimi Hendrix campsite, looking at a haphazard contraption that, upon closer inspection, is indeed meant to be a tent. Right now it might just get away with being called a tepee — it looks a bit like one, as there’s a large protruding point in the centre of the nylon.
“It’s supposed to be a rectangle,” the third person in their party says, looking at the picture on the bag it arrived in. “This does not look like a rectangle.”
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The festival’s early arrivals are largely left to make their own fun until the music gets properly under way, around 7pm. Many are sitting at their tents, playing music through portable speakers.
“We should just stay here,” a man wearing not one but two bucket hats says. “We already have music.”
“Yeah,” his friend replies. “I’m definitely going to tell people that I paid 300 quid to sit in a field and drink cans all weekend.”
Inside the festival arenas, the set-up is clearly different from previous years’. The main stage has moved, as has MindField, while the Jerry Fish Electric Sideshow has been renamed Fish Town.
But the most sacred Electric Picnic institution of all remains untouched: the inflatable chapel, where all true love stories begin. “That’s probably the only way I’d be able to get you to marry me,” a woman says to her boyfriend as they walk past, hand in hand. He says nothing.
At a picnic bench nearby, Ronan Farrell and Sean Cooney, who are from Portlaoise, are taking a water break before venturing to see more of the site. Farrell has attended almost every year since the annual event began, in 2004. He’s glad it’s back — it’s “so close that it would be a shame not to go to it”, he says. “We’re proud geriatrics attending.”
“And it’s great to have a bit of live music. Live music is so important. It was a huge loss to the local community over the past two years,” his friend adds.
