Great Britains Past and Present

Glastonbury ‘09: Three Men and a Tent, Our Festival Experience Part 2

August 7th, 2009 |

The Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival

The day of the Trip is finally upon us!!!!

Well it’s been a while since the last post due to some site improvements. But the Wandering Glastofarian is finally back and this time to stay!!

Here’s the second part of the story of our Glastonbury Festival 2009 adventures.

Thursday 25th June 4.00am

We’re all totally knackered today, and some of us are feeling the effects of the day and night before. Then again I wasn’t driving at all during the trip so was planning to catch up on the journey down (never happened as usual).

The festival site opens on the Wednesday of festival week, but due to some work issues we had no choice but to travel on the Thursday. The journey according to that “annoying voice box” (aka Sat Nav) told us it would take a little over 3 hours 30 mins to get down to Worthy Farm, but we knew from experience it would take twice that. We’ve never done this journey by road before, always opted for the train and then busses to the site, and in retrospect we won’t take the road again!

Exactly 10 miles from home we hear the first peep out of the Sat Nav woman, who seems to take great pleasure at telling you what you have done wrong and “Prepare to do a U-Turn” not possible in the fast lane of a Motorway!!! It was no wonder that happened really Mark decided in his wisdom to try and use predictive text to programme the box, and somehow managed to route us to Glastonbury via Glasgow!!

Glastonbury is in the South West of England and Glasgow is Due North! So we went in the complete wrong direction. Still when we finally found a place to leave the Motorway and head in the right direction we were nearly 60 miles off course.

A Map of all the Music Festivals held in the UK

7.00 am

Well we are now just 20 minutes from Worthy Farm, the Sat Navdidn’t cause us anymore problems, although Mark did, your not allowed to take glass bottles on the the Festival site which means you have to decant the drink into plastic bottles. Not something to try going down the Motorway at 70 mph while trying to light a cigarette but we managed. We stopped at the Services for a refresher. Steve got lost on a Video game for about 20 minutes. Steve our driver disappeared and came back in a right temper. The toilets in this place had a pay entry turnstyle and he fell out with the attendant saying that 30 Pence was taking the Pi** quite literally. While all this was happening I was in what seemed the biggest service cue I had ever seen to order Coffee and Bacon Rolls for us all only to find out I should have rang my bank to arrange an overdraft before doing that £25.00 for 3 large Coffees, 3 litres of Water and 3 Bacon Rolls oh and a pack of Cigarettes.

7.45 am

Well we’re all set, Festival Tickets in hand, Car Pass stuck on the windscreen and now tuned in to Worthy FM, we just caught site of the Tor in the far distance.

Almost there. We got stuck by this sign for 20 minutes!

We’re all parked up and for the first time actually realized we were here, we’ve been many times, but each year we go it is like the very first time.

Then we thought right OK We’ve arrived but how the hell are we going to get the camping gear from the camper van to our camping spot? Whatever we were going to do we were going to have to carry it all across. Myself and Steve stayed and slowly unpacked the contents of a Van into a pile in the middle of the parking field and sent Mark off to find a suitable spot… He came back 20 minutes later with a group of people who he said “they’ll help carry the gear for a few beers and a bit of food so the deal was done! A lad called Sparky turned up with a big wheelbarrow and we threw the kit in there and off we went to start our latest Glastonbury experience.

11.00 am

Well that’s it we are settled in making BBQ food en-masse for our new festival pals. Listening to the mix of music and busking that was going on around us. You know it is really odd what you see here. To our left of where we were camping there is a stall selling Ostrich Burgers, then we saw a long line of what looked like undertakers and to top it all off there was “Spike” A 6′ 7″ bloke wearing a big Wellington boot Hat!!

Where we camped, we got here early enough to get right to the front of the Pack