Winston's Zen

WEDNESDAY - THE ARRIVAL

Ok, ok. So setting off in the hire car without a map, might have been an ill-advised way to kick off my first ever Glastonbury experience. But nonetheless, that’s what we did, and yes we might have found ourselves flying past the Cerne Abbas Giant, a full 40 miles from the Worthy Farm site, convinced we were heading in the direction of Pilton before the unnecessary detour we’d taken fully sank in, but somehow getting totally lost turned out to be a massive bonus. Although we’d spent the last hour or so listening to Radio Somerset interview punters stuck in six hour traffic jams near the site, and received text messages from friends who’d left London eleven hours earlier and were still on the road, we ended up approaching the site from what turned out to be the only free flowing road into the festival. We hit the carpark entrance just after 8pm and were unloading the car by 9. Total travelling time from North London: five hours. According to the people we spoke to on site, this would appear to constitute some kind of Glastonbury record. One in the eye for Sat Nav then.

Beaten only by the return trip, to be endured in a few days time by tired legs, hungover brains and sleep deprived minds, carpark to campsite is always the second worst journey of any festival. At Glastonbury, even after a day blessed by the kind of sunshine that makes you forget what mud looks like, that journey is a hundred times harder than any similar trip I’ve ever made before. With the light fading rapidly and our faithful trolley assembled and fully loaded we are ushered along a dirt track running alongside the giant steel walls that mark the perimeter of the daddy of all festivals. The walls, fifteen feet high if they’re an inch and bent back at the top (presumably to prevent members of the SAS and those equipped with grappling hooks gaining free access) look more like the kind that might circle the site of a concentration camp rather than the hedonistic utopia we’ve been told lies within. As thousands of people, old and young, drag, push and heave their weekend’s essentials along the six-foot wide track, the darkness exaggerated by these imposing barriers it would be easy to feel like prisoners of war being made march to their meagre quarters, forced to carry the guards possessions as a further hardship. That feeling is compounded maybe thirty minutes later as sweating and heaving, we pass through the entrance turnstiles and receive our papers.“You MUST keep the tickets with you ALL weekend” the stewards bellow to anyone within earshot, “and DON’T attempt to remove your armband” they add helpfully after securing it using a huge rusty vice.

The Campsite Crew (not a travelling hip-hop act, it turns out) inform us that they’ve never seen so many people arrive on the Wednesday and the campsite we’re supposed to meet our friends in was reported as 95% full over an hour ago. We’re told our best hope is to head for the Park area which demoralisingly is a forty minute walk away. Morale takes a further battering forty minutes later, when we’re told by another steward that the Park is still an hour away and that it too is starting to fill up. Nice to know that some of the people working here are as lost as us. And lost is exactly what we are. Already shattered from our exertions and daunted by the sheer volume of people milling around outside what we later learn is the Queens Head Stage, with a trolley full of bedding and food, and two rucksacks full of clothes and camping equipment weighing us down, we set ourselves down to take stock of the situation. The campsite close to us is so full, it seems futile to try and find a space for our tent there but the idea of carrying our things to another is about as welcome as and MPs expense claim. And then an angel of common sense comes skipping over to our aid. “I’ve been all round the site” she tells me, smiling the inane grin that we’ll see again and again as the weekend goes on, “everywhere is already as busy as everywhere else. You might as well find a spot in here.”

That, and the prospect of not having to carry our things any further are all the encouragement we need and we set about the business of squeezing our three manner in the tiniest of gaps in a campsite that turns out to be bang in the middle of the festival, with the Pyramid stage and the Queens Head competing to drown each other out during the day, and a Mowtown / Guilty Pleasures disco on hand to keep us awake over night.

Thankfully, considering it’s now 10:30pm, our tent happens to be a doddle to erect, and after introducing ourselves to our closest neighbours (there’s probably 40 tents within a ten metre radius of ours) one of whom informs us that we’ve pitched right in the middle of her group of friends tents, as if you get to reserve a space at Glasto to act as your communal garden. “You haven’t been to a festival before have you?” I reply pointing to a six foot by three foot gap in which she’s opened up a few camping chairs. “We’re the least of your worries; they’ll be a tent there by the time you wake up.” I promise her.

We spend the next few hours wandering around the site, attempting without much success to acquaint ourselves with the frankly mind-bending layout. Eventually we give up and head back to our tent. Maximo Park kick the whole thing off at 4pm tomorrow, and as we settle down for the best nights sleep we can possibly muster the realisation of where we are kicks in and the excitement becomes almost too much too bear.

Funniest T-shirt slogan seen today: "Sex, Drugs & Sausage Rolls".

Back soon,
Winston