WITH Hampshire's biggest music festival wrapping up last night, today the big getaway begins.

Up to 67,000 revellers have spent the weekend at Boomtown Fair, and will now be hitting the road, adding more traffic than usual to roads near Winchester and Alresford.

The five-day event at Matterley Bowl celebrated its biggest year yet, with more than 500 artists across 27 main stages, featuring music from over 80 genres.

But Robert Fox, who has lived in Cheriton for around 50 years, does not believe the size of the festival is fair on local villagers.

He said: “It was about 30,000 at the start, then it seemed to grow every year, and it won’t stop here. The event continues to put pressure on the use of the A272, which we use all the time, and for anyone to say that the traffic problem can be sorted, it’s just not true.

"With that volume of people at one event, the traffic becomes horrendous, and most of them don’t stay on site."

Boomtown organisers have "worked extensively" with traffic management team CTM to ensure there are not any "major delays".

A public notice from the festival states that peak traffic today (August 12) will be on Morestead Road and Longwood Road between 8am and 4pm.

A spokesperson said: "After the successful implementation of our traffic management plan over the arrival days, we will continue to work closely with the Hampshire County Council Highways Team to implement our dynamic traffic management on the egress day on Monday.

"Since the majority of the attendees will be leaving on Monday local residents have been advised that the roads near the festival site will be busy most of the day on Monday, specifically between 10am - 4pm on Monday."