Blood, Sweat and 300 Beers: A veteran’s Glastonbury Festival survival guide
Nothing worthwhile in life ever comes easy. From training the palette to enjoy olives and oat sodas to the months of saving and stress of the airport before basking in the bliss of the Costa Del Sun, a lot of the best things in life come as reward for hard work and waiting. Glastonbury Festival, likewise, is an Everest. The airbrushed euphoria presented on the BBC is a lie, those thousands in the field are battle-scarred and bewildered, but with a bit of luck, they’re also having the proverbial time of their life.
This could be you too, but there are plenty of pitfalls that you have to avoid. You are entering a city-sized carnival/battleground and you have to be prepared. Land is a premium, toilets are perilous, stages are distant beacons that glint with possibilities, and in amongst it is little old you. You’re going to need all the help you can get.
As you struggle through the masses, you will see seasoned fellows who have clearly become part of the festival, woven into its essence like those petrified people at Pompeii. You will wonder how they have survived this yearly assault on the senses and come back for more in their autumn years. And they will all tell you: ‘It gets easier every year’.
With that in mind, we have compiled our knowledge and expertise. We’ve tapped up the veterans in our ranks and garnered their sage advice. Fail to heed it at your own risk. There are a thousand of other titbits we could have imparted – from packing wipes to digging out a she-wee – but for the sake of not blinding you with science, we’ve kept our list down to ten essential Glastonbury survival tips.
10 top tips for Glastonbury Festival:
1. Travel Light
Whether you’re on the coach, in the back of a Ford Fiesta or on the train, this is the most crucial piece of wisdom we can possibly give you. Pack for all eventualities, of course, but make sure what you do pack is also adaptable for all eventualities. You won’t thank yourself for packing four coats, six jumpers and five pairs of shoes when you’ve finally reached those blessed gates and now have to scale a city the size of Oxford to find where your mates have found a spot… (which will most certainly be as far away as you can imagine, somewhere amid hills that only Frodo Baggins has previously had to contend with).
Also, while your at it, sack off that little B&M trolley you’ve bought, it’ll cause you far more problems than the mere £10 it’s worth… those smalls plastic wheels aren’t going to last on Glastonbury’s hallowed turf longer than two minutes (rain or shine). A simple rucksack and raincoat should do the trick, everything else takes care of itself.
2. Essential Footwear
A point of equally high importance: you can’t and won’t outsmart the Somerset terrain in a pair of Primark plimsolls, just don’t even bother. You need comfortable, reliable and ideally weatherproof boots or shoes which will handle all eventualities.
Yes, may have been checking the weather app for the last three months and think you stand a chance of getting away with a cool pair brothel creepers, but the chances are the weather app will be wrong. You don’t want to be the only one with a horrific blister out of your mates. And in rain and mud, trench-foot is even less fun. Go safe and go sturdy.
3. Essential Headwear
Now, in the age of Instagram and dodgy tagged Facebook photos, of course you don’t want to look like Worzel Gummidge emerging from a hedge, but find a good hat that’ll keep the sun off and keep you cool. You can always buy one there, but that Saturday afternoon sun can be a killer, and you don’t want to end up headlining the welfare tent with sun-stroke.
Embraced the cliched bucket hat, celebrate The Ashes with a cricket fielder’s sombrero, but just don’t succumb to fainter’s folly of saying, ‘I’m just not that much of a hat person’. Hopefully, it will be a warm, sunny festival this year, and that requires you to meet it sensibly.
4. Water Saves Lives
Water is your friend, in almost all situations. Take some good sturdy re-fillable bottles and keep yourself topped up. There’s plenty of time for boozing, but this is not a marathon, nor a sprint nor the world’s best cultural festival… it’s an endurance test of the body and mind. Drink more water.
It can be the latter, of course, but the drowsiness of dehydration or being too drunk to make out of the tent at past 5pm certainly curtails that euphoric potential. Take it from someone who was once temporarily paralysed through dehydration when their Potassium levels dropped below critical: the importance of water can only be understated by a fool.
5. Camping Advice
Everyone is in search of the holy-grail here, and by definition that comes in many different forms at Glastonbury depending on your requirements and what sort of experience your looking for. However, they all share one crucial thing in common: you should always aim for high ground. Now, you don’t have to be Ray Mears to work this one out, but, do you really want to be at the bottom of a hill when gravity sends a river of sludge your way after a heavy thunderstorm (that wasn’t forecast) – no, of course you don’t.
Furthermore, take a good tent but one you are prepared to accept damage upon. If you can seek shade. Never, ever todd in it. And if you can, try to find some sort of landmark in the vicinity to help your drunken legs stagger home.
6. Longdrop Logistics
We all have to go, and the toilets, unaffectionately known as the ‘longdrops’ owing to the lofty descends that todds have to parachute from, aren’t the most appealing place to go, but, anything is better than a portaloo and Glastonbury’s long drops, for the most part, are clean and well tended to.
Make sure your camping spot is just the right distance away so you aren’t taking in the delights first thing in the morning in your nuclear hot tent but also, not a hike away when you need to spend a penny in the middle of the night.
7. Eat Some Fruit
As we’ve mentioned earlier on, this is an endurance test and you need to look after your body (stop sniggering) and you’d be surprised how much better that come down feels with a bit of fruit to sort you out. The on-site 24 hour Co-op is always well stocked and is very reasonably priced comparatively. Taking a trip there whenever you can is always recommended to stock up on essentials.
Plus, there’s just something quite pleasant about having earned your breakfast beer by chomping down a banana beforehand. Struggling away to the Co-op getting some healthy, and then returning to the binge makes the beer hit in the same way that one expects Andy Dufresne experienced after tarring the roof with his purely platonic friends on The Shawshank Redemption.
8. Stop Making Plans
Yes, you’ve looked through the programme and split yourself in three trying to get from The Park to Woodsies in 5 minutes (forget about it, you need 25 minutes with human traffic, minimum). You’re at Glastonbury after all, so if you miss a band you’ve seen three times already, well, you’ve probably taken in something more interesting anyway.
Check out something down the old railway track, the healing fields, theatre & circus. You’ll be glad you did, and the real Glastonbury is not the Pyramid Stage, despite what BBC may have you believe. It is, in fact, more nebulous than that, a sort of metaphysical aura that you may experience just as profoundly from the deck chair outside your tent as blistering around to catch two songs by a band before jetting off to the next one.
9. Booze
Now, Glastonbury is handy, particularly in a cost of living crisis, you can take your own pints… what’s not to love? Whatever your poison, just remember, you’ve got to carry it, and there’s hundreds of bars on site to cater to your every whim (a pint is generally £6).
Remember storage, you are most certainly not going to drink a bottle of Malibu that’s been sat in your hot tent for four days… trust me on that one. So, by all accounts take what you will, but remember the first rule of Glastonbury and the importance of being footloose.
10. Embrace It
Don’t wish a minute of it away. There’s nowhere like this place in the world and it’s special. Drink it in and enjoy. You’re at Glastonbury. Soon enough, you won’t be. There’ll be moments you hate and moments you’ll remember for the rest of your life. Embrace it all, from the worst todd in your life to being spotted crying in the crowd by the BBC’s cameras.
Oh, and it’s 10 points for every A-lister spotted, 5 points for the B-listers, and spotting Homes Under The Hammer’s presenter Martin Roberts is the golden snitch that wins the game. Enjoy.
