5 days, 200,000 people, dozens of
music stages, hundreds of music acts, food and market stalls, and hours of
other entertainment… on a farm in Somerset, England. This is Glastonbury, one of the biggest music festivals in
the world, and this is our experience.
After catching the Eurostar from
Brussels to London we met up with Georgia and went on a mission to find some
key supplies for Glastonbury – airbeds, wellies and umbrellas! Tick on the airbeds and umbrellas but
no luck on the wellies, apparently the whole of London was in short supply! With supplies in tow (and hoping we
would be able to buy wellies at the festival), we headed for the festival!
After a 3 hour bus ride we
arrived at the festival, had our tickets checked and were given a program, and
then we set off in search of a campsite.
Luck was on our side, and we got the perfect spot right near the Dance
Village, close to but comfortably far enough away from the toilets and food
stalls! The rest of the day ended
up being a series of missions to find wellies and beer (tick and tick!), and a
long walk to find out way around.
It’s here I should say something about the size of the festival… it’s
hard to comprehend the scale of the place when you’re there, and even harder
when you’ve never been. Just
believe me when I say it is truly enormous! On that first day we walked for a couple of hours and
covered probably only half of the festival grounds.
The next 3 days ended up blurring
into one fantastic party, so I’ll pick out the highlights...
Music:
You could probably go to
Glastonbury and end up not really listening to much music at all, despite some
of the huge names playing - - there is so much else to keep people
occupied! But our main focus was
the music, specifically BREAKBEAT!
Seeing as most of our favourite breaks dj’s come from the UK, it was the
perfect opportunity to see many of them in the same place. Dreadzone, Atomic Hooligan, Aquasky,
Krafty Kuts, Stanton Warriors, Freq Nasty… a line-up like that in Oz would have
breakbeat fans drooling and almost passing out from excitement! These guys all played awesome sets
typical of their own style, I don’t think I’ve ever danced so much in my
life! We also managed to catch
snippets of a few other sets over the weekend, like Timo Maas, Pete Tong, Ben
Sims, Leeroy Thornhill, Scratch Perverts and Beardyman (who was
excellent!). The Dance Village had
4 main stages, plus a couple of other small areas, so there was always
something to keep us entertained!
We also managed to get to some of the other stages to see a couple of
big names, like Dizzee Rascal (who played a wicked set!) and Tom Jones. Abe and I didn’t make it to Bruce
Springsteen (he clashed with Stanton Warriors!) but Georgia and Gareth did, and
were a bit disappointed that he played mainly new stuff that a lot of people
weren’t familiar with. To top the
weekend off, we saw The Prodigy on the Other Stage on Sunday night (we opted
for them instead of Blur), which we were pretty excited about as despite
listening to their music for over 15 years, ever since their album The Prodigy
Experience came out, we still hadn’t seem them play live! We estimated that about 60,000 people
crammed in around the stage, and The Prodigy didn’t disappoint – crazy,
colourful and just what we expected, they played a mix of old and new, and it
was a great way to end the festival.
Other stuff:
As well as music, the festival
has so much else going on, it would be impossible to mention it all here. We walked through the Green Fields area
a couple of times, which is full of stalls where you can learn about sustainable
energy and the like. One area had
a circus tent, there were movies showing in another tent, and endless kids
activities. Quite simply,
Glastonbury has it all!
Funny stuff:
- Pitching one of our tents on top of the bag of pegs
and guide ropes, having to buy replacement pegs from a camping store at the
festival, and then not finding the original pegs until we packed up the
tent
- The chick passed out with a beer in her hand at the
campsite next to us
- The crowd chanting “one more tune” to the ice cream
van on Sunday night after all the other music had stopped
- We heard Dizzee Rascal’s track Bonkers played 5
times at the festival by different people
- The girls behind me in the queue for water taps
complaining about the people in front washing their hair and holding
everyone else up… fair enough comment, but stop with the whingeing!!
Crazy stuff
- The guy wearing the Borat mankini
- Shangri-La area and the trippy Arcadia stage, which
made you feel like you had just walked onto the set of Mad Max
- The group of REALLY wasted people on the G Stage
dancefloor on Saturday afternoon that were dressed in baby costumes,
complete with nappies, dummies, bibs and bottles
- Someone near us lighting a flare when The Prodigy
played Firestarter and sitting on someone’s shoulders while holding it
- The crowd trying to get to Rolf Harris on the Jazz
World stage… we never made it anywhere near the place!
- The crowd trying to get to Arcadia at 1am on
Saturday night after all the other stages had closed down
Cool stuff
- It rained!
It wouldn’t be a true Glastonbury without rain… thank goodness we
bought the gumboots (wellies for the English)
- The burning lanterns being set off into the sky all
night from everywhere, particularly the stone circle
- Listening to Tom Jones tell the sound crew to turn
up the volume on the Pyramid Stage, and then sing his old classics
- The view of Glastonbury from the hill
- The sand castle sculpture of Mt Rushmore
- The amazing number of food and clothing stalls at
the festival
