If you\u2019ve never worked behind a bar, there\u2019s a visceral thrill to be had from pulling the wooden handle on a tap, especially if what comes out of it is not beer but water. Free water. It\u2019s beautiful.<\/p>\n
Last Sunday, while at a concert in the magnificent courtyard of the Piece Hall, an 18th-century building in the English town of Halifax, I availed of a surprisingly snazzy water-dispensing system, which came with multiple taps and a stash of paper cups. When the cups ran out, shortly before the headline act came on stage, they were restocked on request. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m not saying this was the best thing about a sultry night of live music in Yorkshire, but it was right up there.<\/p>\n
At outdoor live events in 2026 there is no facility more important and essential than the water points. They don\u2019t have to be as fancy as the one I used at the Piece Hall. We\u2019ve all pressed those strange rubber buttons or waved at recalcitrant motion sensors in a bid to get a steady spout of H2O into our bottles, cups and mouths. <\/p>\n
We\u2019ve all spluttered in tandem with faltering streams and despaired when other humans snatched the last available drops of liquid survival, leaving the rest of us to parch.<\/p>\n
Today it can be expected that music festivals and all-day sporting events, as well as many, though not all, one-off outdoor gigs, will advertise the provision of free water. This is good. When I started going to concerts, what we didn\u2019t know or care to know about the principles of hydration could have filled a reservoir. <\/p>\n
[\u00a0France restricts alcohol consumption and cancels some events as temperatures pass 40 degreesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n A hot day was merely a prompt to consume even more Coke and bad beer, condemning us to more frequent trips to antediluvian portable toilets that couldn\u2019t take the strain of so many diuretics at once.<\/p>\n Were our faces red from dehydration or sunburn? It was probably both. Did we accidentally turn ourselves into dried-out, semi-delirious husks or was this all part of the experience in our (sunken, stinging) eyes? <\/p>\n It\u2019s not that we were hostile to the concept of water. We didn\u2019t behave like a World Cup crowd booing hydration breaks for having the temerity to interrupt their entertainment. We just didn\u2019t fully appreciate the job that water did.<\/p>\n Not to sound all Steven Bartlett about it, but these days when I go to a gig I don\u2019t want to spend half a week recovering. But it\u2019s not just me that\u2019s changed. It\u2019s the planet<\/a>. More intense heatwaves in Europe, such as the one still scorching the Continent, have forced the arrival of more enlightened attitudes to hydration. <\/p>\n Event organisers, having perhaps learned the hard way that it\u2019s not a smart idea to create the perfect conditions for a high incidence of heatstroke, have made water less of an afterthought.<\/p>\n The problem is that the number of water stations and the rules governing reusable bottles vary from event to event, venue to venue. Some ban opaque bottles (the kind that keep water cool). Some also specify that nothing made of hard plastic is allowed. <\/p>\n