Glastonbury Reflections

I’ve been back from Glastonbury 2010 for a week now and I thought it was about time I said a few words about it. Overall it was a good festival, the weather was fantastic, too fantastic really because it was very sunny and hot all the time we were there. Anyway, I’m not going to write a big review of the whole thing, just one or two high/low spots.

Getting There

Up until last year, getting to Glastonbury was a piece of cake. We’d set off sometime on Wednesday morning, enjoy a leisurely drive down the motorway and drive right to the entrance gate without any hassle whatsoever. We’d get parked-up, load our camping stuff on our backs and be sat in our camp site enjoying a beer in no time at all. Easy.

Last year, things changed. A few of the smaller stages opened on Thursday afternoon and featured some profile bands. Suddenly Wednesday became Thursday and the majority of people coming to the festival turned up on Wednesday. The result; carnage on the roads. I pulled off the motorway about 9.20am yet didn’t get into the site until the late afternoon. Nose to tail traffic all the way to the entrance. I absolutely hated every mind-numbingly boring mile that we had to crawl to the site. It was so dreadful that we decided that for 2010 we’d travel down on the Tuesday and sleep in a Travel Lodge or similar.

We ended up setting off at 2.00pm on the Tuesday before the gates opened, When I say we I meant me, Lisa, Becca and Lisa, Mikey, Sarah and Simon, Chris and Anthony. We’d changed the location of our Travel Lodge at the 11th hour and ended up driving down to Taunton. The hotel was just off the M5 next to a retail park and had a pub right next-door. We had tea in the pub, The Hankridge Arms, before getting a few hours sleep.

We left Taunton at 5.00am and it took us about an hour to get into the car parks at Glastonbury. We had about 20 minutes of queueing at the entrance but nothing too annoying. We couldn’t get into our usual Yellow Gate though since that was now disabled and hospitality only. We had to use the new Bronze Gate and found ourselves parked in West 31. No worries, not far from where we usually park anyway.

The car park was already pretty full because a lot of the people there had taken advantage of the car-park gates opening on the previous evening while we were in the pub. There were sleeping bodies in cars everywhere but more worrying was the fact that there was an enormous queue alongside the edge of the field. I had a dicky-fit since I hate queuing and I had a right strop on for an hour or so. To their credit though the stewards in our car-park did their best and despite having to join the massive queue, we quickly reached the entrance and we were in. It was only 9.30 or so and this time last year we were just beginning the traffic day of hell.

Camping

Since 2005 we’ve traditionally camped in Wicket Field. It’s quite close to the festival bus station but most people walk straight on by and head deeper into the site. That left Wicket Field relatively quite and peaceful and was our Glastonbury Home. This year however the field had been designated as Family Camping only so we had to find somewhere else to camp. Not only that, the field was sectioned off with fences meaning that we had to walk around its perimeter to get to our new chosen site on top of Hitchen Hill Not much fun when you’r pulling a trolley with all your kit in the red-hot sun.

I actually quite liked our new camping area even though it was a bit of a pain negotiating all the tents climbing up the hill. We set up our usual gathering of tents but despite me asking for everyone to erect their individual tents really close to our Gazebo, people were too eager to get their tents up. Also we Toasty didn’t bring his Gazebo into the site which meant we were left with just one and a big gap. That gap was filled with other people’s tents pretty quickly and that effectively cut our camp in half. I wish people would listen to me sometimes.

As the weekend progressed I could see that Wicket Ground hardly filled up at all and there were large areas of green grass. Perhaps next year a smaller field could be allocated for family camping.

Anyway, once we got our camp sorted out we all went down to the Pyramid Stage to watch England’s only win versus Slovenia in the World Cup. It was a bit rubbish because we were miles away from the screen but I suppose we had it to do.

Cheese and Wine Evening

One of the highlights of the festival for us was our Cheese and Wine evening. We’ve said for a few years that we should have a dressing up day so we decided this year we’d all bring some dressing-up clothes and have a little soiree up by the stone circle.

Everyone made the effort by dressing up and bringing food and we all walked from our campsite up through the green fields to our picnic site. We got a few funny looks, a lot of people didn’t even notice us and we had a jolly old time.

Right at the end a band turned up, Orkestra del Sol and they played an impromptu gig right in front of us. We ended up dancing the conga all around the field and I couldn’t imagine a better start to the weekend or end to the day. It was absolutely brilliant and will be a treasured Glastonbury memory of mine for many years to come.

Once the band had finished we wandered off to Shangri La for an explore, despite all getting a bit lost in the darkness. I think we were all a bit tiddly by this time and I actually have no recollection of how we got back to the tents!

Music

Obviously I saw a fair few bands at the festival. The ones I enjoyed most were Frank Turner, Mumford and Sons and The Flaming Lips. Lots more bands were great, I just enjoyed those three the best. Shortest Glastonbury music review ever, or what!

Change of Attitude

Over the past few years I’ve noticed an influx of Glasto newbies to the festival that don’t seem to get it. People chucking half empty water bottles into crowds, people barging their way through to get to the front etc etc. I reckon that they’ve cut their festival teeth at places like Reading, Leeds and V. Well it seems to be the norm to be a bit arsey at those places but please don’t come to Glasto if you’re going to be just annoying.

Glastonbury is OUR festival, not just one we’re attending. Please don’t forget that.

Come Home

I left Glastonbury after the main acts had finished on Sunday evening. I keep threatening to stay over into Monday but by the time Sunday comes I’m usually knackered and busting to get away. We managed to get out of the car park within 30 minutes and had a slow drive home through the night stopping whenever I was tired.

Since getting home I’ve had time to reflect and I always realise that I had a really great time after the event. Thanks to all the people we camped with again: Phil and Lauren, Neil, Steve, Dave and Kate, Gem and Ricky, Julien, Olivia, Megan, Dom, Kaylie (shhhh), Lynn and Damian and the gang we travelled down with on Tuesday.

It was a good festival, great weather and I’m looking forward to 2011 already. Although, I have the small matter of Bestival to negotiate first!