91热爆

A group of four friends from Northampton, Lincoln and Crawley set off for Somerset at 5am today after checking the official Sunrise website.听听

It wasn鈥檛 until they spoke to other drivers at a truck stop on the A303 in Yeovil that they realised it had been cancelled.

Lorry driver Hawk Pixie from Northampton was among the group.

He said: 鈥淚 got a text from my mate Chris this morning at two, to say he鈥檇 heard on the radio that Sunrise had been cancelled.

"But when I checked this morning the Sunrise site hadn't been updated.

The festival is proud of its green credentials

Out of date

"It still had a message on from last night that said don鈥檛 set out because of adverse weather conditions and they were waiting to hear about some licence.

"It said they were having an inspection and would let you know.

"Then a couple of entries down it said the festival had passed the inspection, it鈥檚 got the green light. We took that to mean it was going ahead.

鈥淔air enough they couldn鈥檛 help cancelling it but update your website.

鈥淲e didn鈥檛 know what to think so we came down anyway. It wasn鈥檛 until we saw a cancelled sign at the Penniston roundabout that we were 100 per cent sure it had been called off."听

Around 4,000 visitors are trying to leave the site

Sophie Docker, one of the festival organisers, apologised for the confusion and blamed technical difficulties with their server.

She told 91热爆 Somerset: "The problem was the website couldn鈥檛 handle the amount of traffic we were getting.

"The tech guys were working round the clock on a new site, but not the old one and during the migration process some of the information was lost."

She apologised too for the late notice of the cancellation. She said the decision was only taken at 9pm last night. She said they had deliberately waited to see how bad conditions got, before deciding to call it off.

"Up until the beginning of the week there had been really good weather predictions for the weekend and suddenly we had flash floods. We know that festivals get wet and muddy and still carry on, we just wanted to see what would happen before we disappointed all of our guests."

It was the first time Hawk and his friends had bought tickets to the festival and they had been looking forward to seeing a dance and trance group called System 7.

Ticket holder Dan Rossiter, who lives nearby said, "It's a shame but it was always a possibility because of the nature of the site. It's very flat and with the amount of rain we've had it was bound to flood."

The show must go on

The organisers will announce on Monday whether ticket holders can have a refund. Sophie added: "There's still a possibility we may be able to hold the festival later in the year, for now we just ask that people support us in trying to make the most of this difficult situation."

The cancellation of Sunrise means the loss of two green festivals in Somerset this year, after organisers of the Big Green Gathering announced Sunrise would replace their festival for 2008. Sophie said: "It would be such a pity if we lost Sunrise too. We can't let that happen and we need your help to make sure it carries on."听

Meanwhile delays are expected on the A303 as organisers attempt to clear the site of hundreds of visitors who arrived on Thursday afternoon. The rest of the weekend will be spent clearing away the equipment and dispersing the 3,000 members of staff.