Glastonbury: beats, bars, bands and bees

Early on Wednesday morning (I say early it was actually 8am - the time the gates opened at Glastonbury) I set off with some trepidation, (and DD)  to the biggest music festival in the UK. The journey was stupidly easy, no queues anywhere despite AA signs and dire warnings online of long waits around the site. We arrived at the Purple car park as instructed and were shown to a parking spot about as far from the main festival site as was possible without still being at home.

The view from the car park (which was high on a hill) over the festival was amazing. We had packed light (we hadn't) and so we put the trolley together and set off. We camped on Hitchin Hill as the family camping was already full when we arrived at 11am. It was very steep but luckily DD's beauty and my feeble helplessness attracted manly types to grab the trolley and RUN with it to the top of the hill in a show of awesome macho-ness. We pitched the tent, dropped the trolley and our valuables off at the free lockup and then wandered off to the Green Fields, through the circus fields, to Williams Green where we could finally see the holy grail of our journey, the finished Ecover Bee sculpture by Ptolemy that we had previously seen in pieces in Brighton. The bee looked amazing. So different to last time we saw it. (more of that in later posts)

We bought ourselves a Glastonbury T-shirt each and moseyed on back to the tent via the craft field and the 50p tea tent (the clue is in the name there) where oddly everyone was spilling their tea.... At the tent by 7pm and DD was out for the count, all that healthy exercise, early morning rising and hauling a stupidly overladen trolley across Glastonbury will do that to a person. I had a gin and watched the sun setting. On Thursday we were raring to go, a great nights sleep (although my hips were aching - I must be getting old - not sure how that happened) We started the day with coffee and hot chocolate at the tent (ah ha bringing the camp cooker suddenly seemed like a better idea!) And then went down to the festival site to shop, stare and eat. We spent time at all the best places, the Cider bus, the kid's field, played giant twister, made stick people in the green kid's field and then....then it began to rain

 We braved the rain for some time, chatting to friendly hot pork sellers (ooh er) and getting wetter and wetter. Finally as there were no bands we were desperate to see we went back to the tent. 2 early nights...what was going on! It continued to rain all night, and when we woke it was still raining, luckily I had two pairs of wellies... to be continued .....