Y Not Festival 2024 Review Part 1: The Festival Itself

We booked Y Not this year with a bit of trepidation. For a start, we normally go to Kendal Calling on the same weekend. But, more importantly, last time we went to Y Not in 2017 the rain and mud was so bad that the Friday headliners and a load of other bands didn’t play, and the festival was cancelled on the Sunday morning! 

The lineup was much better for us than Kendal Calling though. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds played both, and ensured we’d be going to one of them, but Snow Patrol and an undercard featuring loads of our favourites just on the first poster made sure Y Not just shaded it this year, so we decided to make the change. 

Y Not Festival 2024 lineup poster

The price and value for money is brilliant as well, with our tier 2 tickets costing £187 each, including Thursday entry. You wouldn’t be far off paying that just for Noel and Snow Patrol on their tours, never mind everything else you get to see. 

As it turned out, we had an amazing time. It’s not a perfect festival, which we’ll get into, but you can see an incredible amount of music over the 3 and a half days, and in general it’s a great place to spend a weekend. 

Thursday arrival

A lot of these smaller festivals give the option to buy a ticket for the Thursday as an optional extra, with a smaller programme of music and a medium size headliner. We’ve always done this in the past, but didn’t for Kendal last year and found we felt rushed when we headed in on the Friday, and were knackered by the time the headliner came on. 

So we were back to Thursday arrival this year, and it honestly makes such a difference to the overall experience. The campsite didn’t open til 12 so we didn’t have to get up mega early, and could leisurely make our way there, get set up and have a few drinks by the tent while watching the field fill up. It’s one of my favourite parts of the festival as everyone is in a great mood and really up for it. The hot and sunny weather made it even better!

The campsites

Another advantage of the Thursday arrival is getting a good camping spot. We were in General camping, and the furthest point looked a fair walk from the arena, so we set down at pretty much the closest General field to the arena, which helps as the weekend goes on.

We were camped roughly at the bottom left corner of “Misty Mountain” on this map. Even though its the most popular campsite, it wasn’t that busy, and we had plenty of space around our tent the whole weekend. This was from our tent at night

The food was very basic in the main campsite area, though there were a few better stalls by the entrance to the arena for breakfast. The toilets in the campsite weren’t great, especially by Monday morning. They were the proper old school ones where you can see everything, and there were a lot of funny remarks overheard as people went in!

The atmosphere

We noticed that there was a huge mix of age ranges, though there were a lot more teenagers than we expected. They all seemed friendly enough though, and while they were loud and energetic, this doesn’t bother me at all. It’s pretty funny overhearing and watching their antics over the weekend in the campsite, and they never caused any trouble either there or in the arena. There were also a lot of families about in the arena in the daytime, and groups of older people too. 

I was really impressed with the general atmosphere, I didn’t see any trouble or arguments except for one time during Noel Gallagher, and everyone seemed really into it when the bands were on.

Only watching bands you’re interested in

One thing that really struck me was that people seemed to only watch the bands they were actually interested in, which made it really easy to get a good spot for almost every act. Those acts in the daytime got smaller crowds but without loads of people stood near the front talking, and that made for a better experience. 

For the early evening, it always got noticeably busier for the band just before the headliners, as the families were still out, but then a bit quieter for the headliner as people disperse around to watch the bands on the smaller stages. This meant you could get pretty close to the front of the main stage without trying, which is pretty important as the sound quality isn’t great further back at the main stage. 

The arena

Layout

The arena at Y Not is really small, and that took us by surprise when we saw it from the coach. It’s set out in a bit of a circle, which makes it really easy to navigate and get between stages, as the map below shows. 

On a couple of the days we had acts we wanted to see on The Quarry (second stage) and Giant Squid (third stage) around acts on the Big Gin (Main) all within a couple of hours, and everything was so close together that we could do that without issue. 

Here’s a few pics from around the arena:

As you can see, its a pretty small festival!

Toilets in the arena

It’s fair to say there are nowhere near enough toilets at this festival. There can’t be more than 100-150 portaloos in the arena for the tens of thousands of people in there. It did mean there were some bad queues, especially later in the day.  Some more were put in on Saturday, but it still wasn’t really enough. 

The queues went down a bit quicker than we expected, and the urinals helped keep some pressure off the portaloos, but they need to at least double the number of toilets in the arena as women essentially have to miss music to go to the toilet in a lot of cases. 

Funny toilet message!

The drinks

I liked the drinks selection, they Brewdog Lost Lager and Wingman as the draught beer, Thatchers Haze as the draught cider along with Mixtons cocktails and the usual spirits. There were also Thatchers Blood Orange and Lemon cans on sale, along with a couple of other Brewdog variants in the Watchtower craft beer bar. 

Brewdog isn’t a lot of people’s favourite but I was happy with it, and the prices just what they are at a festival. I refuse to be drawn into the debate about people being “ripped off”, as no bar profits = no festival. 

The reusable cup system wasn’t great though, with £2 being added onto any drink didn’t return a cup, but no option to take a token when you don’t want to carry a cup around like at other festivals. Not ideal for watching the headliner to just carry an empty cup about. That could probably do with some extra thought and a token system to avoid this. 

The food

Honestly, the food was poor. Maybe we’ve been spoilt by Glastonbury and Kendal’s excellent food selection, but a lot of the stalls didn’t seem great. The food looked and tasted cheap in some cases and some of it came lukewarm at best. In the case of the nachos and very cold cheese sauce from one stall, it was inedible. 

That’s not to say it was all bad, A big shout out to the Mexican and its incredible BBQ chicken burrito and beef chilli and rice snack bowls, which are a perfect size for while you’re drinking (the snack bowls not the burrito, which was massive!). It was also good to see Domino’s there, especially when we fancied a big meal on the Thursday after drinking in the sun all day!

The campsite food was basic, as it always is. There were a few stalls just outside the arena entrance for breakfast etc, with one of the toastie vans being pretty good. 

It was just hard to work out what would be good and what wouldn’t be. 

The merch

I’ve got properly into buying t-shirts from festivals, after annoyingly getting rid of loads of band t-shirts a few years ago when I thought I was too cool for them (which has never been the case…). Y Not had a really nice selection of stuff, some really nice designs and the t shirt I got seems to be good quality. 

After hours

Y Not is one of the best for after the headliners have finished, with a few different tents playing music til around 2-3am. There were at 2 indie discos on most nights in different tents and Club Malibu was playing cheesy pop throughout the day and night too. Loads of people seemed to stay out and it was a good atmosphere.

Club Malibu

Getting in and out

We don’t drive, so we’re always reliant on public transport and shuttle buses. Usually festivals have a pretty consistently running shuttle bus, and we’ve rarely had any problems. 

Unfortunately it was pretty bad this time, with only one coach taking people to and from the festival from Buxton Station. That was fine on the way in on the Thursday, as there was no traffic. But on the Monday morning it all went very wrong. 

The festival took bookings for the shuttle buses at specific times, only opening them a week before the festival. We arrived just before 10am for the 10.30 coach, only to find that the earlier coach had not even left yet. By the time that first coachload of people had been taken to Buxton and the coach had returned, it was nearly 1pm, so we had waited 3 hours with no way to get food or water (and the campsite food vans were closed). 

It wasn’t a great end to the festival, and to be fair Y Not have given us a refund for the shuttle bus and assured us they’ll be putting a better system in place for next time. 

Overall though, it was a great weekend, perfect weather and loads of great music. I’d recommend Y Not for anyone who’s looking for a bit less walking (though you do still do a lot!) and wants to see a lot of primarily guitar-based acts in a short period of time. You won’t get that “festival experience” that the bigger ones like Glastonbury or other more “refined” events can give you, it’s a bit more basic than that. But we like basic so it works for us!!

See part 2 for our review of the most important part, the music!