I got robbed in my sleep at Bestival

Before Bestival I was a festival virgin and the last of my worries was getting robbed. I thought that the portaloos were going to be the thing that stressed me out the most. I’d heard of people being robbed before and I knew it was a possibility but like everyone else I never thought it would happen to me.

On the first morning I was woken up by the two girls I was sharing a tent with. The first thing I noticed is that although they were both in their sleeping bags, both zips to the tent were undone. All their cash had gone from their bags – one of which was right next to their head and to check if I still had mine. Thankfully I did but we soon realised that the contents of one of our rucksacks had been emptied just outside our tent and they had taken off with the bag. The strange thing about that is that they didn’t need the bag to carry anything as they had just taken cash and it was just an ordinary rucksack, nothing expensive.

We went to the police who had a van set up and they told us that there had been an unusually high amount of thefts on the first night. We later learnt that theft was overall up by 41 per cent on last year and they also mentioned that the vast majority of reported thefts were by girls. One girl told us she woke up and her sleeping bag was completely unzipped and all of her money taken – she was so scared by it that she decided to leave. Although the damage was already done, for the rest of the weekend we had one of our male friends sleep in the tent with us.

The worst thing about the experience was the thought of someone having been over us in our sleep. Money is replaceable, but the thought of having a stranger lean over you and rummage through your possessions in your sleep is something that will stay with you.