Fans arrive early for three-day Oxegen festival

ONE OF these years, fans going to Oxegen will catch a break with the weather.

There was an outbreak of summer for early arrivals to Punchestown racecourse yesterday - the first time the music festival gates have opened on a Thursday.

Conditions were muggy and heavy showers of rain arrived as the afternoon progressed, but aside from the scores of ladies who desported themselves in hot pants and sleeveless T-shirts, the fans and the venue itself came prepared for the weather.

The remedial work which has been carried out on the site was apparent. There are roads all the way from the entrance points to the blue and red campsites, new roads have been built for car-park access and the problematic area between the main stage and the O2, or second stage, which churned up very badly last year, has been tarmaced over.

There is sawdust at the entrance to both camp sites and a thick swarth of meadow grass for the pitching of tents.

The ground was soft but stood up well to the earlier arrivals, and barring the odd deluge or two, the mud, which was such a feature of last year's festival, should be notable by its absence this year.

The fans who arrived yesterday were overwhelmingly teenagers who didn't have to worry about work just yet. They were joined by 40 fans from Belfast who had an eventful journey to the festival when their bus caught fire on the M50.

They arrived just after 5pm in good spirits and were taken to the welfare tent where they were given tickets, blankets and tents.

An estimated 30,000 other fans were scheduled to arrive yesterday with more arriving this evening. Thousands more are making day-trips on Saturday and Sunday.There are still tickets available for the festival, which has a capacity of 80,000.

As fans arrived at the entrance to the red campsite, a truck nearby blasted out Rage Against the Machine's incendiary Killing in the Name Of.

Rage Against the Machine, who only recently reformed, broke up in 2000, before many of the teenagers who arrived yesterday had heard of them, but their headline show on Sunday evening is one most fans seemed to be talking about.

Ryan Keane (18) from Roscommon said: "Rage is the one that everyone wants to see. They've been gone for 10 years. They're back and they're headlining." Marty Cooper (17) from Belfast said: "Their live shows are just infamous and the crowds are just awesome."

The music gets under way on the main stage at 5pm with Scottish songstress Amy MacDonald, while Dublin indie band Future Kings of Spain open proceedings on the O2 stage. Kings of Leon, who Oxegen fans nominated as the act they most wanted to see, headline this evening.