Revellers flock in thousands to rock fest

REVELLERS continued to arrive in their thousands for Ireland’s biggest rock festival weekend yesterday lugging air beds, tents, boxes of food and those all-important wellies.

As the rain held off for most of the day and campers settled into their tents, the music fest began on the main stage with the Artane Band, along with The Brilliant Things, who kicked off the three-day festival’s sixth year.

Behind the scenes in the campsites, fans arrived by bus, car, bike and even on foot, with some sporting colourful wigs, concert shades while others brought their own guitars.

Despite forecasts of bad weather today and this evening, thousands of music lovers braved the Punchestown site’s grassy hillocks in tents and camper vans.

Eleven people have been arrested and a number of drug seizures made since punters began to arrive at the site on Thursday. The arrests related to public order offences and possession of drugs.

Gardaí said the traffic management plan had proceeded well yesterday, with 18,000 festival goers arriving by bus and the remainder by car.

By nightfall, more than 60,000 campers had arrived and two of the main car parks quickly filled up. Gardaí were last night advising patrons to use the Park and Ride facilities at Goffs and the free 24 hour shuttle bus in and out of Naas.

Last night’s highlight was Blur, who played their first Irish gig since 2003.

Kings of Leon are set to headline the main stage tonight with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds playing the O2 stage, while The Killers will play the main stage on the last night of the festival.

Meanwhile, revellers of two different generations were in for a big treat with their respective music heroes taking to the stage in Cork and Dublin.

Rapper 50 cent wowed the faithful last night, providing a high energy climax to the Live at the Marquee in Cork, while Bruce Springsteen is set to rock the RDS in Dublin tonight. He already set fans alight recently at the Glastonbury festival in England.

He went down a storm, focussing on his rockier material, rather than his more reflective acoustic work, something he is expected to repeat in Dublin.