There are other ways to Glastonbury, and I have used pretty much every one. The train does not differ hugely from the coach experience, except if you get on one of the full ones you won’t have a seat and it will be a bit cattle trucky. But the first four times I went to Glastonbury, we went by car.
This can be great fun of course. You get to listen to your Glastonbury mix tapes and the radio on the way down, including shout outs from Radio One. The M4 trip is not unlike Tom’s tube experience below, as you get closer more camper vans seem to be on the road, more cars filled with gear.
And then you turn off to the only part of the drive I now miss (the rest, as you will see can be deadly). Chippenham Safeways. Why we always turned off at Chippenham I don’t know, but there was nearly always a giddy rush around the supermarket to buy bouze and other inappropriate objects (plastic bread and primula often being high on the list). Value lager bagged, apples away you would get back in the car for the FIVE MILE TRAFFIC JAM. Well the forty mile drive to the FIVE MILE TRAFFIC JAM.
There was a bit of superstition about the traffic jam. Basically as far as we could divine, it started just where your radio could pick up Radio Avalon, so you hoped for weak transmitters. My first year this all too place at about midnight and our lucky driver managed to take two shortcuts through farms. But generally it was a slow crawl until you got to the site, and were placed in the car park the furthest away from the site.
Of course this was all in the terrible scally days, and is probably much more professional now. But sine going by coach, I appreciate the joys of jumping the queue as our air-conned coach glides past the mugs in their cars.
Of course, the journey back is a different matter entirely.