Glastonbury 2013 (June 22nd - July 1st)
This was an experience and a half! I was really nervous about going because camping for ten days is my idea of a nightmare, and if it was muddy and raining all the time, i don't know how i would of coped!
We was volunteering with Oxfam, something i hadn't done before, but it was so much fun in the end, and was well looked after! Camping in Big Lickle, we was a ten minute walk from the pyramid stage (if you knew where you was going), with warm showers, amazing food thanks to Nuts cafe (with five free meals), cleanish toilets, and phone chargers!
I went with three friends from uni, then three of niamhs friends who had volunteered before for oxfam! Luckily we all got the early shifts, which meant we arrived on the saturday before the gates opened, with our first shift starting on the sunday and finishing on tuesday (three 8 hour shifts). Our shifts involved directing traffic round the markets and helping with directions with all the market stall staff, which surprisingly i enjoyed speaking to them and wasn't as shy as i usually am with strangers, even made best friends with the scouse security guy, haha! So thankful for being given this job instead of on a gate because we got to talk to the market stalls, and watch the little world being built and getting to know where things are! Our supervisor was an absolute babe too, oh mazza! She was 60 something and working with her husband, Alan, which made up our team!
When our shifts was over on tuesday, we went upto the park where the word glastonbury was up like the hollywood sign, and chilled out for a few hours in the sun before heading back to camp for some food and well needed sleep before the festival opened its gates to the public wednesday morning!
Festival time!!!! It was such a beautiful day, sun out and time to go explore properly! We spent the day walking round the stalls, shopping and trying out the food on offer, stopping at stages to see what was going on and discovering the other stages round the site, and the after party arenas such as block 9, shangri la and the unfairground! unfortunatly noone told us about the opening ceremony, and we arrived back at camp around half 9, just as it started, but we had such a good view of the fireworks and bonfire on the park from our campsite, and attempted to build a fire for ourselves.
The rain started on thursday, just as we entered the arena and i was only wearing vans, so didnt stay in the arena for longer than a few hours as it started to get muddy! we managed to try out a few of the tea tents, and the greenpeace fields, going into the globe for a twenty minute slideshow of what they were trying to prevent! Once back at the campsite, we managed to dry off abit and eat something in the oxfam tent. Luckily it stopped raining by the time we went back out at night, and we headed to the intergalatic homosexual experience in block 9, where we were presented with drag queens doing a show. After a few hours in there we decided enough was enough and started to head back, but got sidetracked by a tent and ended up dancing on a table for another two hours, protecting the tree in the middle of it. To this day i dont know what or who the dj was but it was good!
Luckily didnt wake up too hungover on the friday, and we headed down for a day of music! managed to catch the hives, the hospitality set, pro green, rita ora, alt j, foals and ofcourse artic monkeys, before stumbling across to arcadia for the Andy C set, which was amazing, Friday was probably my fave day!
Saturday was a bit of a haze, my hangover i should of got on friday finally hit me, spend most of the day going with the flow and hanging around the dance arenas, till we saw abit of rolling stones, then heading over to chase and status. Come 2 i had to leave shangri la and head to arcadia where i was able to sit and chill out, before getting back to the tent to find out we had been robbed of our alcohol, which was an absolute nuisance!!
Sunday day was spent packing up all our stuff, our 9 days of adventure was near an end, so once we packed, we headed to the circus tents for the afternoon checking out what was going on, getting my hair braid from a crazy lady with a beard and serious side boob. The evening involved going to see netsky with kaka, before being dragged to mumford and sons, but my highlight from that night was deffo the xx! Spent the night at arcadia (Again, haha) and made friends with people in the crowd, one being an ex bassist from eyes of a traitor which i only found out when i got home, haha! but ofcourse i got too drunk again and the drive home at half 3 in the morning was hideous! falling asleep in the car in awkward positions, getting to birmingham at half 6 to drop Chloe off, then getting the half seven train home to Stockport where i slept alllllllllll day.
i wish we was still there, there was so much weird and wacky stuff which if i even tried to write about, it would be too hard, its deffo a thing you have to go see before you die, because its just like a little world, where nothing on the outside of it matters, and everyones so friendly with amazing food and music. totally want to go back next year !!!
pixelskylines
2087
tangentwithtanner
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
blakekathryn
