The journey to Glastonbury was very smooth, with only two wrong turns
that were quickly rectified. We only saw one police car, and that was
going in the opposite direction
As we came within fifty or so miles of the site, I was seeing lightning
in the far distance. This seemed to be a long way off, so being a
natural optimist I decided not to worry about it too much.
Suddenly we were at the gates to the car park, East 11 to be precise,
and it was time to put the sticker in the car to gain entry into them.
Many people do this as soon as they receive them, but I don’t like to
tempt fate! Also, I would imagine this could make you a target for the
police on your way there, or any “undesirables” that may be lurking at
rest points on the journey.
After we were directed to the correct spot, we started to unload the
car, and hoisted the large rucksacks on our backs, with the tent in
another bag, sleeping bags and pillows in another, and another holdall
with more clothes in, we weren't exactly travelling light!
Trying to find your way in isn't the easiest thing in the world,
especially when there are no other people heading in the right
direction, but a friendly word from a steward got us going in the right
direction.
The walk to the site is a long one, walking through the fields of
Campervans and Caravans feels a little like your first day at a new
school, people don’t seem that friendly, but then again, it was 5am!
Three quarters of the way in, as we were heading down the slope, a
cheery “almost there now!” was enough to keep us going.
On getting to the gates, we first went through a bag check, which was
not over thorough, but did involve checking side pockets on the bags,
and opening and putting their hands through our rucksacks. We were
waved through with no problem, and moved towards to main entrance,
Pedestrian Gate C in our case.
On producing our tickets and photo ID, we had our Glastonbury
wristbands attached, as well as receiving a Make Poverty History white
one for free as well. I was well pleased with this as I’ve had a blue
bullying one on for a while and was going to buy a white one down there
anyway! We then moved on to another little bit where we received our
Glastonbury packs with our programmes, mini guides for round your neck,
and free condoms, this is great when you’ve already got a massive
amount of luggage with you but we managed to find space for them.
Next, it was on to the real getting in, once again, ID and tickets were
shown, and our tickets checked under the UV light. The ends were ripped
off, and we were told not to let them out of our sight as we would need
them for re-entry should we leave at any point. This is stressed to
you, and with good reason, as we would find out later.
After all that, you are finally in, and then the joy of finding
somewhere to camp…not easy when you can hardly walk at this point,
after doing about a mile and a half from the car.
I couldn’t remember where I had camped on my previous visit, so when we
came to a crossroads, we could turn left which went up a lane to (what
looked like) nowhere in particular, straight on which went into the
heart of the site, or turn right towards all the other tents. We
decided to go towards the other tents, and shuffled our way further and
further into tent city.
After about a ten minute walk, we come to another crossroads, but this
time with a caravan and people with T-shirts bearing “Campsite Crew”.
We approached and one of the guys asked us to follow him, saying things
were very full round this part, but he would find us somewhere. Sure
enough, in a couple of minutes he called us over, and had found us a
spot. I wasn’t that impressed, other people’s guide ropes were in the
way, but he said this was of no concern, and we should just shorten
them!
We started pitching the tent, which wasn’t too bad, and got the outside
done relatively quickly, the inside took longer, and by this time it
was raining, but we were inside at least, and felt a bit better.
After getting settled and unpacking a little, we decided to go for a
walk, Jill wanted a waterproof
coat. On the way there, Jill said she would text/ring a friend from SU
we had arranged to meet at Glastonbury, I said we should leave it until
we had got some sleep, and Jill agreed with me…we would later regret
that decision!
After we got back to the tent, we got into our sleeping bags and
settled down for a sleep. The rain was hammering the outside of the
tent now, very hard, and the thunder was extremely loud as it only
seemed to be a few feet above our heads. Lightning flashed every minute
or so, and it made us glad to be inside.
Neither of us are sure just how long we were asleep for, certainly no
more than an hour, but things started getting very serious very
quickly.
I started to feel like I was floating, Jill also felt the same thing,
and she quickly realised that our waterproof ground sheet wasn’t doing
it’s job. The water now started to flow above the sheet, and was soon
gathering in the entrance to our tent, where all our clothes were
piled. We decided to get out, find some kind of waterproof bags/sheet
that we could gather our stuff into and try to save it.
When we came back with a tarpaulin, things had gone from bad to OH
FUCKING HELL!!!
Jill sprang into action, she dived into the tent, and began sorting out
our bags and clothes. Passing them backwards out of the tent to me, she
was half kneeling half stood in water of about a foot and a half that
was flowing very fast through the tent.
We made the decision to abandon the tent, grab everything we could, and
return to the car where we would re-group (We also had a clean dry set
of clothes each in the car as well!).
As we set off walking with our soaked bags, we weren’t happy bunnies,
getting to the car seemed like the best thing to do, and at that point
I was contemplating just going home, we were seriously cold, wet, and
pissed off to say the least.
After walking back towards our exit, we were then told it was flooded,
and we would have to leave by another one. This doesn’t sound bad, but
the site is huge, and our car park was near one of the exits. To leave
by another and get to the car would be a monumental effort. We trudged
around the site for about two hours, getting lost, getting wetter and
more and more down heartened. We walked past the Glade, the camping
area that was shown on the TV and in the newspapers. To see people’s
tents actually submerged under 4 or 5 feet of water made us realise how
serious this was – but at the time we were only concerned with our own
plight.
Just when we were getting close to dropping, but with still no idea of
where to go, Jill spotted a steward in a Land-Rover, and went to ask
him how we could leave the site. He told her information we already
knew, but she didn’t realise this, so when she told me I went to speak
to him, explaining that we needed to get out, and that our exit was
blocked. He said to leave by another exit, if we were able to at all,
would entail a three hour walk back to our car park. I told him our
tent was trashed, and we’d already been walking for two hours. He
looked at me, and said “Right, who is there with you?” Just me and one
other I replied. “I’ll take you up here, there’s a barn here, and
they’re trying to turn it into a make-shift shelter” He said, showing
me a map.
I sprinted (funny where the energy comes from when you can find help!)
over to Jill who wasn’t happy about this! “Why does he want us to get
into the car?” she asked. “Because there’s a shelter thing for people
being set up, and he says we can get a lift, get in!”
Jill got in the front, and I clambered into the back. There were other
unfortunates in there as well, a couple who were sat with no trousers,
just towels and underwear on their bottom half, and T-shirts on their
top half. No shoes or socks either!
After deciding to put a band together, we had a drummer, guitar player,
keyboard player and recorder player (Jill!) and me dancing of course,
Bez style, we looked at the chaos going on. People were just trudging
about, carrying tents. These were people who had arrived while the rain
was coming down, who knows what they
must have made of it, especially if it was their first time at the
festival! I fail to see how anyone can prepare for this kind of freak
weather. It’s estimated that the whole of the average rainfall for June
fell within two hours on the site, and that an estimated 2,000 people
went home on Friday morning. If we had been able to get out, we may
have joined them.
We pulled into the yard that was by the Green Barn. After jumping out,
my phone fell into the mud! People ran from the barn to help us get
inside (it was still raining very heavily at this point) We stood, not
knowing what to do, but the people in the barn were ready for action!
First things first, they took our names and then directed us over to
some camp beds that were laid out, and then started to give us towels,
wellies, clean clothes, space blankets, tea and coffee and food. We all
started to feel a bit more like well looked after refugees rather than
just displaced nomads! There was a screen at the end of the barn, and
Jill went to get changed, whilst I just hid behind some farm equipment
to do it. We were starting to feel a bit sorry for ourselves but the
volunteers were not having any of it. A group of them were off-duty
policemen and women from Liverpool. They made a very big effort to keep
our spirits up, just saying “look, get settled here, get warm, dry and
comfortable, and worry about everything else later”. People were
turning up at regular intervals, just 5 or six at a time, and the place
started to get busy. I wanted to smoke, so after a while I started
rolling a joint, and one of the off-duty coppers saw me, he looked
twice and then carried on what he was doing. I carried on and went to
smoke it outside. He never said a word, and soon people were smoking
inside too, so we did as well, what a place.
As the day went on, the care and affection that we were treated with
really lifted our spirits. The volunteers who were helping us were
amazing, putting washing lines outside so things could be dried, and
going round from group to group having a laugh with everyone and
reassuring them. We were feeling much better, and were very relaxed.
Jill turned to me and said “Look, if we can avoid it, I really don’t
want to go home”. She had a point, when you’ve been given as much help
as we had, it wouldn’t feel right just upping and leaving.
As evening drew near, we started wondering where we would spend the
night. The concensus seemed to be, either where we were now, in another
barn like it, under a marquee somewhere, or we would be loaned another
tent. We were asked to go and see if anything could be salvaged from
our own tent. When we got there we couldn’t find it! A girl ran after
us and asked if we had left it here this morning. We said we had and
she took us to where it had been pitched, and told us that the people
in the tents around us had had to take it down because the water
running down the hill was damming up behind our tent (which was about 5
or six feet across) and flooding all the tents around it. Our tent was
lying crumpled and covered in mud. The poles were broke and it was
ruined. Jill managed to save her denim jacket, and the only other thing
worth mentioning was that a packet of tobacco was fine, despite
spending the entire day submerged in the mud! It says something when a
£100 tent can't survive a bit of rain, but a £4 packet of tobacco can!
With a heavy heart, I folded up the tent and its pieces and threw it
into one of the bins nearby.
We returned to the barn, and Jan, who was running the operation, said
at about 9.30 she’d have some news regarding any decisions made about
where people would sleep. She asked us to come back at 9.30pm, and we
left the barn to go watch The Doves for 45minutes or so. We finally
started to see what we had come here for, talking to a few people and
enjoying a spliff or ten in the evening sun!
At 9.30 we returned to the barn, really wanting to get everything
sorted out so we could go off and enjoy ourselves. Jan was there, and
when I asked her what we should do she asked me “What do you want to
do?” I told her I wanted to go and see a few bands and DJ’s. “Right, so
why don’t you then, start enjoying the festival!” I said I didn’t want
to disappear and then come back later to find no one here and us with
nowhere to go, so what time should we be back. She put on an
incredulous face “I’m not your fucking Mother! Whatever time you get
back here, and whatever state you are in, there will be someone here to
sort you out!” This is exactly what we wanted to hear, so off we went!
We decided that we were going to get blasted, so we watched the Killers
and started getting ready for all the stuff we wanted to see later. We
decided to get over to the Other Stage to watch Fatboy Slim, this took
a good 45 mins or so, as a lot of people were heading that way, and the
mud was a foot deep in some places!
We’d seen the Fatboy about six months previous at a gig in Leeds, with
about 2,500 people there. I couldn’t say for definite how many were
watching him this night, but I’d say at least 30,000 or more. He was as
amazing as ever, he really puts on a great show when DJ’ing, and the
crowd were going mad, and forgetting all about the mud for a while.
He was in the centre of the giant screens that surrounded the stage,
and if you were near the front you got 3-d glasses which did something,
I was told what later, but can’t remember now!
After a while we went over to one of the main dance tents and feasted
our ears on the Chemical Brothers and their DJ set, as usual, really
excellent, and everyone was bouncing.
After being there for a while (things were starting to get a little
confusing) we wandered around engaging in random conversations and
inappropriate comment shouting with our fellow fuckheads before
returning to the area around the main stage. It’s a very strange place
at 2 in the morning, litter and the occasional body strewn about the
place, so we headed up the hill to where our tent was (boo hoo) and
found a couple of people gamely trying to keep a campfire going. Soon I
was despatched with the task of finding paper budweiser cups, no one
could be bothered going to get any proper fire wood, so we did our best
and chilled out for a bit with our new friends.
When we got back to the shelter, it was 4am, and true to their promise,
someone was there to help us. We were told to get blankets and wait
outside where a Land-rover would come and take us to the Acoustic tent
where we would be sleeping. We didn’t have long to wait, and soon
arrived to find about 40 or so people had already bedded down for the
evening. Trying to unwrap Space blankets quietly is not easy,
especially in the smashed state we were in, but we soon had a makeshift
bed sorted, and as stewards were guarding us, we finally had our bed
for the night sorted. It was hard to believe all that had happened to
us in just 20 hours, and if anyone had said we would have been so happy
and so relaxed after the morning’s complete disaster, we wouldn’t have
believed them.
, a whole six years after I'd previously been. In that time many things
have changed. In 1999, there were no ten foot high perimeter gates, and
no ID checked on the way in. Consequently the festival regularly had
reports of tens of thousands of people getting in for free, and
(although I never witnessed any) entire tents being stolen, and other
serious robbery and mugging crimes going on.
