After a year’s enforced absence, festival season has well and truly hit the UK. Music lovers across the UK have been flocking to get tickets for this summer’s festivals, with the climax of the season – Creamfields in Cheshire, and the Reading and Leeds festivals – all taking place over the coming Bank Holiday weekend.

UK festivals are always somewhat at the mercy of the weather, and while many fear a deluge of rain, it’s actually extreme heat that may cause issues for many. Reports suggested the August Bank Holiday is likely to be hit by the kind of extreme heatwave the UK experienced in July.

If it arrives as expected, the heat wave will impact the climaxof major UK festivals this summer, including EDM festival Creamfields in Cheshire, plus the Leeds and Reading festivals, all of which start on Friday 26th August.

Keeping cool while camping at these festivals will be essential for the thousands of UK music fans expected to attend each event. This is why, as part of their Karaoke Index campaign, the team at Uswitch have come up with some red-hot tips for keeping cool when camping at this summers festivals.

1. Pitch in the shade

When you arrive at the festival’s designated camping area, consider the weather forecast for the duration of your stay. If it’s going to be hot, try and pitch your tent in the shade. A hedge? A port-a-cabin? All good. Long-drop toilet? Less so.

Ideally, you’d like your tent to be in the shade all day, but this isn’t always possible, so prioritise your tent being in the shade from midday to evening. This should help prevent the air inside it from being heated throughout the hottest part of the day by the sun.

2. Take a tent designed to keep you cool

Camping technology has come a long way in the past few years. There are plenty of tents on the market that now feature black-out bedrooms that can reduce the internal cabin temperature by around 5°C.

As an added bonus, they also block the light out, just like black-out blinds, meaning you won’t be woken by the sun coming up earlier than you’d like. However, these tents can be more expensive than their more basic counterparts, so may only be worth the investment if you’re going to camp regularly. It’s worth asking around to see if anybody you know has one you can borrow before investing in one yourself.

3. Face the breeze

When pitching your tent, it’s always tempting to face the main entrance towards the nicest view, be that the ornate sculptures commissioned by the festival organisers, a good view of a distant stage, or just overlooking your mate’s tent.

However, as good as the view might be, it isn’t going to keep you cool. Instead, when pitching your tent, check which direction the wind is blowing, and face the entrance to your tent towards that direction.

However, be wary of areas that look like designated camp-fire pits. You won’t want to be facing into the breeze when the smoke starts blowing.

4. Reflect the heat away

If you can’t find any natural shade to pitch your tent in, try to create some of your own. Wind-breaks – essentially long pieces of material strung between poles that you hammer into the ground – are primarily designed to protect your tent from unwanted wind, but in hot weather, they can provide some much-needed shade. They’re very thin, so still work even in the most packed festival campsite.

Another make-shift solution is to pack a couple of emergency foil blankets – the kind you see marathon runners wrapped in after a race. String one up about half a metre from your tent and in the direction of the sun. This will help create shade, and reflect much of the excess heat away from your tent. They’re easily available online and in outdoor shops, and usually cost very little.

5. Stay hydrated

It may seem obvious – but can often be overlooked when camping at a festival. It’s important to ensure you drink plenty of water during a heatwave, and even more so when your tent is acting as a canvas greenhouse.

It’s unlikely your festival campsite will have easily accessible, clean drinking water near where you’re sleeping, so think ahead. Before you travel, check if there are refill stations offering clean drinking water. Take at least a couple of reusable water bottles to fill up and drink from on a regular basis.

If the festival site does not have access to drinking water, make sure you take plenty of your own, and then some extra. You’ll need more than you think.

6. Get a fan

When the mercury rises at a festival, a fan is a piece of low-tech kit that can be the difference between a good time and a bad one.

If you want to avoid gadgets that might run out of charge, you can opt for an old fashioned hand fan to waft some breeze your way. However, there are plenty of small, rechargeable, USB fans on the market that are no bigger than a modern smartphone. Most are good for many hours of use off a full charge.

7. Freeze water before you travel

A couple of nights before you’re due to travel, fill a couple of plastic bottles roughly 80% full with drinking water, seal them firmly, and put them in the freezer to go solid.

Take these camping with you and they can act as make-shift freezer-blocks to keep food chilled while travelling. If you’ve got a small USB fan (see above), place one of the frozen bottles between you and the fan to get a blast of icy cool air. And finally, when the ice eventually melts, you’ve got another source of clean, fresh drinking water.

8. Pick the right sleeping bag

Sleep can be one of the things most adversely affected by a heatwave when camping. Even if it’s cooler outside at night, heat from the day can linger beneath the canvas at night, which will only be added to by your body heat. And with the doors and windows closed, there’s little place for it to go.

As such, you should try to take a sleeping bag that’s appropriate for warm weather. Obviously, first-time campers may not want to invest in multiple sleeping bags on the off chance it may be warm while they’re away. If so, a simple bed sheet can provide a similar level of comfort and security, but also help you remain cool when you’re trying to sleep.