Festivals and camping with Type 1: the kit, the cool bag and surviving the weekend
How do I get through a festival or camping weekend: no fridge, no routine, drinking, dancing all day?
A festival stacks most of the things that make Type 1 harder into one weekend: heat, no fridge, miles of walking, alcohol, odd food and not much sleep. None of it is a reason to stay home, and all of it is easier if you pack for it. The two things that actually bite are your insulin cooking in a hot tent and an overnight low after a day of drinking and dancing. So the plan is a cool bag kept in the shade, roughly twice the kit split across bags, fast sugar that survives heat and being sat on, a power bank, and one person who knows plus the medical tent found on the first day. Everything else is detail on top of those.
- Heat is the main threat to insulin, and a tent in summer sun is one of the hottest places you will ever put it, so spares need a cool bag in shade.
- You will walk far more than you expect: steady walking tends to lower glucose, hard dancing or pushing through a crowd can raise it first, and a low can come at the time or hours later including overnight.
- Alcohol blunts your liver’s overnight glucose release, so the risk of a low is heaviest overnight, in a tent, after a day on your feet with less food than usual.
- Charging matters more than people plan for, because a flat phone can mean no sensor readings, so a power bank and a finger-prick meter as backup earn their place.
- Fast sugar must survive heat, which rules out chocolate in a field in July, and it needs to be on your body, not back at the tent.
The cool bag, and why the tent is the enemy
Insulin is damaged by heat, and a tent in summer sun climbs well past anything it should ever see. Leaving your supplies in one for three days is the most reliable way to get home wondering why nothing has worked properly. The answer is a cool bag or an evaporative cooling wallet (a fabric wallet you soak in water that keeps insulin cool as it dries), kept in shade, and not pressed directly against a freezer block, because freezing ruins insulin just as heat does.
Think about where things sit during the day too. A bag baking at the front of a stage, a pocket in direct sun, a car in the afternoon: all the same problem in a smaller form. The insulin you are actively using is a little more forgiving than your spares, but it is not immune, so keep it out of direct sun. Some campsites and every festival medical tent may have a fridge, so it is worth asking on arrival whether you can store spares there for the weekend.
The kit list that saves the weekend
Pack roughly two to three times what you think you need, and split it across bags or people so one lost rucksack does not leave you with nothing: insulin, pump pods or infusion sets, sensors, spare pens and needles, a finger-prick meter and strips, and plenty of hypo treatment. The meter matters even if you have not finger-pricked in months, because it is your fallback when a sensor fails or a phone dies.
Charging is the modern version of running out of test strips. Sensors that report to a phone stop reporting when the phone is flat, and a festival is exactly where charging is scarce and phone use is heavy, so a power bank is worth more than almost anything else in the bag. Fast-acting sugar needs to survive heat and being sat on, so glucose tabs or liquid beat chocolate, which melts. An overpatch (a sticky patch worn over a sensor or set) helps it survive sweat, mud and rain. A small travel sharps bin deals with used needles, which are otherwise genuinely unpleasant in a tent, and a medical ID or wristband is worth wearing even if you never normally do.
Walking, drinking and the cumulative effect
Most people underestimate the walking. A festival day is often many miles across a site on top of standing for hours, and that steady activity tends to lower glucose. It also accumulates: the third day is not the first, because the effect stacks the way any repeated exertion does. Harder bursts, dancing flat out or pushing through a packed crowd, can nudge glucose up first, so it moves both ways across a day.
Alcohol adds the dangerous half. It suppresses your liver’s ability to release stored glucose for hours, so the risk lands overnight, in a tent, after a day of walking, with less food than usual and little sleep. That specific combination is the reason to plan the nights rather than the days. Keep fast sugar on you and by where you sleep, and tell one person you are with that you have Type 1, what a low looks like on you, and that unsteady or confused might not be what it looks like at a festival. Find the medical tent on the first day, because telling someone its location beats describing it in an emergency, and knowing it is there is worth the ten minutes it takes.
What makes the weekend harder
Camping is the difference between a manageable weekend and a hard one, mostly because of tent temperature and having nowhere to keep things cool. Length matters because the walking and the tiredness accumulate rather than resetting each morning. Alcohol and broken sleep both push the risk toward an overnight low, and poor phone signal is worth knowing about in advance, since some sensor setups lean on a connection that a crowded field may not give you. The hotter and longer it is, the more the insulin-storage and the overnight-low problems both grow.
What catches people out
Examples, not instructions or doses.
Spare pens left in a tent for two days in July, then a run of highs that nothing explains. The insulin quietly overheated while nobody was thinking about it, which is exactly what a cool bag in shade is there to prevent.
Fine on Friday, then low at four on Sunday morning. Three days of walking, drinking and little sleep accumulated rather than resetting each day, and the drink pushed the low into the night.
No charge, so no sensor readings, and no meter in the bag because it had not been needed in a year. A power bank and a finger-prick meter are both small and both worth carrying for exactly this.
The emergency chocolate turned to soup in a warm pocket by midday. Glucose tabs or a small carton of juice survive a field in summer in a way chocolate does not.
Worth paying attention to
Questions that make an appointment useful
When it's urgent
Two situations at a festival are emergencies, not things to sort out later. If a low becomes a severe hypo, where someone is confused, unable to swallow safely, fitting, or unconscious, they need someone else to help with fast sugar or a glucagon kit if one has been prescribed, and if they cannot be roused that is 999 or the site medical team straight away. This matters more here than almost anywhere, because a severe low is easily mistaken for being drunk, which is why a medical ID and one person who knows are so important. And if insulin has cooked or a pump has failed and you are high with ketones, especially with vomiting, stomach pain or fast breathing, that can head toward DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis, a dangerous emergency): check ketones if you can, get to the medical tent, and call 999 or NHS 111 depending on how unwell you are.