Tens of thousands descend on Bramham Park for Leeds Festival

The three day event kicks off today

Author: Ben BasonPublished 23rd Aug 2019

Tens of thousands of music fans are at Bramham Park for this year's Leeds Festival which kicks off later.

The three day event will see sets from Bastille, The 1975 and Charlie XCX amongst others.

It's as drugs experts tell us they're worried a super-strength, potentially deadly, substance could be in circulation at the festival.

A fake-MDMA pill known as NEP's been doing the rounds at festivals which is as much as four times as strong as regular MDMA.

Sammie O'Connor's from drugs charity Forward Leeds:

"This substance known as NEP has been going around festivals. It looks exactly the same as MDMA - it's sold in powder form, pill form and crystal form - but it can be up to four times as strong. so people who think they are taking MDMA might be taking this. And it has been known to be fatal.

"The positive effects of it don't last as long and the negative sides of it last a lot longer so a lot of young people are reporting serious paranoia after they've taken it, insomnia so they can't sleep for 12 to 36 hours even."

The festival will contribute to a busy weekend on the roads around Leeds as the Ashes test continues at Headingley and people head to the Ebor Festival at York Races too.

Chris Addy from Highways England wants us to plan our journeys carefully:

"We're expecting nice weather so we get the traffic for the festival and that adds to the traffic heading to the coast. It is a combination of people travelling about to go to wherever they need to go on the bank holiday weekend.

"We'd expect to see it picking up from mid morning as people head to the races and also head to the festival. So we'd anticipate traffic levels it to peak between 10am and 2pm. But with people heading off to the coast, we do tend to see higher volumes within that area throughout the weekend."

This year at Leeds Festival a new scheme's been launched by British Red Cross to give young people somewhere to go to discuss feelings of stress or anxiety.

They've got young volunteers in all the campsites who festival-goers can chat to if they need some support.

The scheme was trialled at Reading Festival last year but is now being rolled out at Leeds too.

Rosie's one of the volunteers at Leeds:

"Festivals are sort of all the most stressful bits of teenage house party style living crammed into one weekend which they can't easily escape and can't go back to the safety of their own bedroom. So it's definitely an intense environment.

"There's a lot of people who are potentially going on to the next important stages of their life, it's potentially their first time away from home. So I think it's really important for us to be there just as a place to go and chat and chill out and know you're not going to be judged if you've drunk a bit too much or you're feeling homesick.