A sea of abandoned tents, camping chairs and rubbish littered Donington Park yesterday as thousands of revellers left Download Festival.
The fields that had been turned into a mud bath over the weekend resembled an apocalyptic wasteland on Monday with hundreds of empty pop-up tents left scattered across the Leicestershire landscape.
One festivalgoer described it as the ‘saddest sight I saw at Download this year’ as he declared: ‘No excuse.’
Video footage taken within the festival’s makeshift boundary walls showed huge colourful tents fluttering in the breeze with mounds of rubbish discarded on the ground and on the central pathway.
Empty cans and bottles are strewn across the ground alongside carrier bags, with camps said to have been ‘abandoned in the night’.
Camping chairs and inflatable mattresses once sat upon by boozed-up rock fans have also been left behind.
The carnage has sparked anger with revellers being told if they ‘don’t want to tidy up after themselves, they shouldn’t go’.
The video was posted on Facebook with one person trying to excuse the behaviour by blaming festivals for not having car parks nearer the campsites.
It irked one commenter who replied: ‘It’s not a surprise how far it is between car park and campsite. This is just a poor attempt to excuse s****y, selfish behaviour.’
Another called for the tents to be stamped with a ticket number so fines could be dished out for anyone who leaves one behind.
A third blamed ‘the entitled generation’ while a fourth simply said: ‘People are such a***holes.’
Download Festival warns rock fans on its website to only bring what they can take home with most of the abandoned tents being incinerated rather than going to charity as organisers say ‘it is impossible to recycle or reuse them all’.
A message under a subheading that reads ‘it’s not that hard’ says: ‘Take your tent home – it’s that simple. Make it easier on yourself and the environment, invest in a tent that you can use for years to come, and after you’ve used it, take it HOME!’
Wristbands are even emblazoned with a reminder to ‘take your tent home’.
It follows fans taking to social media to vent their anger at the weather conditions that had turned the site into a boggy field as people were forced to party in ‘mud up to their ankles’ – with one person branding the sludge a ‘serious health hazard’.
The mucky fields even caught the attention of some of the bands performing at the Rock music festival.
In a video shared online, the American heavy metal band Pantera shared a video of the crowd, which showed some visibly muddy fans crowd surfing.
They captioned the video: ‘We had a great time today at Download! Here’s a glimpse of our performance. Hope you guys had fun in the mud.’
Most fans tried to make the most of the bad weather and put on a brave face as they embraced the mud. Festival goers have been pictured covered in dirt but smiling nevertheless as they enjoy the live music.
One man was pictured with mud all over his face and arms. While another brave man was even videoed rolling around in the sludge making a mud angel.
Around 75,000 people attended the festival this weekend. The line up for Download included Fall Out Boy, Queens of the Stone Age and Busted.