Guides
Concert guides
Most arenas do not need a guide — you walk out, you get a taxi, you go home. These are the venues where that is not true, and where the answer is decided before you buy the ticket.
Slane Castle
Fontaines D.C., two nights, 160,000 people into a village of 1,445. There is no camping, the road shuts at half twelve, and the last Dublin coach leaves at the time last year’s show finished.
Scarborough Open Air Theatre
The show ends at 22:30. The station is 25 minutes away. The last train is 22:43. Even the dedicated post-show shuttle cannot get you there in time.
Eden Park
Concerts can now run to 11pm on a Sunday. Sunday is the night the trains stop earliest. Nobody has joined those two facts up, and half the crowd leaves by rail.
How a venue gets on this list
The test is whether there is a real getting-home problem worth checking. A stadium in the middle of a city where you can walk to a hotel in ten minutes does not qualify, however big the act. Las Vegas does not qualify, because you can get a taxi anywhere at any hour.
What qualifies is geography and timetables — a venue a long way from the nearest bed, a last train that leaves before the curfew, a single road in and out, a shuttle that only stops at four hotels. Those are the pages where knowing the actual number changes where you sleep.
Where a venue has a proper season we write it as an evergreen guide, because the last train and the walk time are still true next year. Where it is a one-off, like Slane, we say so.