During his first real festival experience, Neil Connor finds the ultimate sense of satisfaction comes from finding a place to pitch your tent - and the ultimate horror is a visit to the toilets.

It was perhaps my own fault for putting off the festival experience until my 30s.

Covered in mud, having walked for an hour before finding a suitable place to set up camp - it was more like the Western Front than Weston Park.

This is clearly something I should have done, like most people do, when I was a teenager.

I am not a festival virgin in the true sense, but on previous trips to music events around the country I decided to disappear from the site not long after the artists had left the stage.

But with the twin attractions of Morrissey and Radiohead at this year's V Festival, I felt the need to immerse myself in the full force of their misery.

And the music was on a par with the elements in the depression stakes.

Driving along the motorway during a torrential downpour was not the best start to the weekend.

I suppose it was when I turned on to the M54 that I decided, against my better judgement, not to turn back.

As I neared the festival site rows of ticket touts were standing in the rain, flashing pieces of cardboard scrawled with the words 'tickets for sale'. The weather was that bad it was almost possible to feel sorry for them. But after "accidentally" splashing them by running my car through a puddle, it was straight into the car park without any delay.

Friday's congestion on the roads leading to Weston Park had seemingly been caused by most of the 130,000 revellers trying to get into V at the same time.

Saturday was free of any traffic and the site was easily accessible. But then came the hard part - finding a suitable spot to pitch the tent.

In one of the most beautiful rural areas of the country, this might seem like an easy task.

But by the time I arrived there was barely a blade of grass on the festival site that was not already occupied.

To emphasis the point that space was a valuable commodity, people had even pitched tents next to the toilets.

Anyone who's ever been to a festival knows that toilets are places that Satan himself would not banish his worst enemies to.

Plastic boxes with a lavatory, and a compartment which must be emptied more regularly, but people queue about 50-deep to use these instruments of Hell.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the search for a tent pitch.

Forty minutes after I left the car park, around the back of the main arena, past the Greenpeace tent, the noodle stalls, the burger bars and security stations, I finally found a campsite - but there was barely room to walk around.

With my tent heavy on my back, I carried on past the toilets, more tents, and an array of smells, some of which suggested that Prince Harry might have been at V.

I also noticed a girl with a rather strange-looking mushroom soup, but she didn't notice me as she was intently concentrating on a tent peg.

Finally, at exactly the opposite end of the site to where my car was parked, I found a plot of green just big enough for my two-man tent.

An equal distance away I could see another weary, rain-soaked, tent-carrying individual with half an eye on "my" space.

There was no way around the situation - it was a Mexican stand-off. Should I give way to my foe, allowing him this plot and forcing me to set up camp near the toilets?

This is a rock festival. The supposed epicentre of peace, love and brotherhood. But there seemed to be no other plots left on the entire site, so without hesitation I staked my plot like a Conquistador.

Tent assembly in the rain is one of those acts which every Englishman needs to do before they die, and I completed this task with only a few minor hiccups.

Now I could celebrate by opening my cooler box and tucking into my stash of cans (festival rule number one - cooler boxes are for beer, not food).

As I walked back to the arena, I could hear the muffled beats of the Dandy Warhols and that's when I knew I was here at last.

My legs were soaked through, the arena was a sea of mud, but the music was superb and half the contents of the cooler box were well received.

This feeling of satisfaction was soon eclipsed by the harrowing, almost unsettling realisation, that the inevitable was almost upon me - a visit to the toilet.