Bimbling around....

This blog was written on Thursday 23rd June, at 9am, about Wednesday's adventures.....

After our much needed morning nap, we went for a bimble - glasto speak for a random wonder- we walked to the market stalls, and had our first meal at Glastonbury (a cheese & onion pasty), whilst we were sat eating our pasty some bluefin tuna swam (walked) past, followed by the fisherman and a a large net, this was a greenpeace promotion to raise awareness of overfishing. Oxfam were also promoting their 'green hand' campaign, so Linz had a green hand print put on the leg of her shorts to raise awareness. We then found an old fashioned red double decker selling tea and fresh juice, along with the nicest, freshest cookies and cake.

We then bimbled back to the tent for a relax under our little gazebo.
Once Lulu had had some sleep, we set off again, ensuring we had the rucksacks packed with essentials, such as loo roll, antibac gel, camara, hoodies, headtouch and glowsticks, we head over to the west holts stage, so Linz could get one of her favourite meals at glasto 'Le Royal' from Le Grand Bouffe, which consists of cheesy, bacony sliced potatoes and a French sausage cooked in red wine gravy. This picture was taken just after we had finished eating.......when you take a nice picture of yourselves, there is always a nutter in the background.....

We then headed to the Brothers Bar for a pint of the festival favourite - flavoured pear cider!
We then had a bit more of a bimble and returned to the tent, to relax and plan for tomorrow's adventure!
The rain woke me up on Thursday morning at 5, then again at 7, as it was really heavy, but what really made me wake up were the voices of our neighbours, saying "oh no, I'm in a puddle", "everything is wet" and "I really hope my sleeping bag dry's out before tonight!"
Linz and I headed off to wash our hair in the freezing / refreshing cold water, ready for the day ahead...

The adventure begins....

This blog was written on Wednesday 22/6/11, at 10:40.
We met Lulu and Darren at TGI's, Bristol as planned on Tuesday, at about 5pm, where we had the last supper. We headed off to Glastonbury, with very full stomach's!!

We arrived to join a line of cars trying to get into the carpark's at around 20:00, and were subjected to stop start traffic until 21:40, we eventually got directed to the carpark E4 (which is miles away from everywhere!). We parked up, and as it was still light, and we weren't 100% which gate would be best to use to enter the festival we went on a scouting mission. We started by heading towards pedestrian gate B, but found that the steward on the way there was clearly taking their job way to seriously, and there would be no way of passing though that field before the gates open, leaving us at a disadvantage. So we headed to Gate C, which is the gate we used last year, to see exactly how many miles we were away! We crossed several empty fields, awaiting cars to fill them. We sat on the hill overlooking the massive site, in the dark of night, with it all lit up - breathtaking. We sat, enjoying a chilled brothers cider, taking in the view. Lulu rang Paul, Kirsty and Grace to see if they were stuck in the car park traffic, which they were, so we decided to walk up the traffic line to meet them. This resulted in Darren waving to more than one frustrated driver thinking they were Paul! Eventually we found Paul's van, and we jumped in the back, we all felt like true glasto hippies!
We all make the decision to queue overnight at the gates, so we head back to the car to pack up the loyal sacktruck! So at 2:00am we were sat in the queue, behind about 100 people.
At about 7:05am the random race to the gate began!
The gates are due to open at 8am, and about 20 past 7 security seem to be taunting us with cries of 'get your tickets ready'. The couple sat infront of us them made a shocking discovery, the girl went to get her ticket out, and found the envelope she had picked up was a hand written note to her flatmate, and not her ticket! We then discovered that she was a student at Oxford University, but clearly not bright enough to check the envelope?? (She was last seen saying to the steward, please let me in, I've picked up the wrong envelope?)
By 7:30am we were moving towards the gate's, and the 'random' security searches were oddly enough only searching the mouthy groups of lads, from the queue.
We got our wristbands, programmes, and anything else they were throwing at us, and we headed to Kidney Mead, we were set up in record time, and admiring our new homes by 8:20, just in time for a really heavy downpour. So whilst we were catching up on some much needed zzzzzzz's, the sounds around us were poor drowned rats trying to put their tents up, and looking how to dry their underwear out!

Twas the night before.....

So, this is it, the night before the adventure starts!
We have prepared the vodka's, pushed them through the cheese cloth to remove the fruit pulp, and put them into  the Sigg bottles.

This was a messy job, as we thought the vodka's would fit perfectly into the sigg bottles.  

This was not the case!

We have also ironed the flag, to seal in the paint, and put it in the washing machine to ensure it will withstand the inevitable downpour!

We are taking the reliable old sack truck, this is it's third glastonbury, and has been invaluable! Although, we are taking less than previous years, we are still taking the tent, 2 fisherman's chairs, the aerobed, the duvet, the  flagpole, the wellies, the vodka filled sigg bottles and the 2 man pop up tent. Plus the day pack full of camara and camcorder stuff plus two 65Litre camping rucksacks full of clothes!

The reason we are taking the two man pop up tent is if it is raining heavily when we get there we can dump all our stuff inside it, so all our stuff doesn't get wet, whilst we put up our tent. Once our tent is up, we will fold the tent back up, so not to waste camping space!

So, the batteries are charged, and we are ready for the off! We are leaving tomorrow, to pop in on family as we head down to Bristol, where we are meeting Lulu and Darren at TGI'S. Here we will eat our last meal on a proper plate, and drink out of a glass cup for the final time for just under a week! After the last supper, we head towards Glastonbury, and the carparks. We will try and sleep in the car for a little while, then we will join the queue. We were so lucky last year, and were only about 30 from the front, and headed into the festival with relative ease, so please keep everything crossed that by 12 o'clock Wednesday lunchtime we are sat in the sun, with all our tent's up, enjoying a nice cold cider!

We will blog when we are home, and have had several hours sleep, hopefully with lots of video's and pictures of, what I am sure will be, an amazing experience!

Flags and Vodkas

As Glastonbury approaches, thoughts turn to the all important flag designs, and flavoured vodkas, along with things like tents and guy ropes. The flag is attached to a flag pole, that is left with the tents, it is so much easier to find your tent at the end of a long day (and night) if there is something to look for. Although you may think you will be able to spot your funky individual looking tent, in the field, it is slightly more difficult when your tent is joined by 1000's of others! Flags are a contentious issues with glastonbury, especially as there seems to be a never ending supply of them in the front of the stage! However, we only use ours for tent finding purposes only. This is the third flag we have made, the first in 2009 was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles inspired, in 2010 it was Goonies never say die, so the discussions began about the 2011 design. After discussion with the rest of the glasto group we decided on Dangermouse, and Penfold, but as we were all loving the new series of Rastamouse, we decided to add Rastamouse to the design.

To make the flag, we choose the design, the search on the internet for easy pictures to draw, then trace them onto the flag (a white 5ft 3ft flag). We then outline them with the permanent pen (we use a Sharpie), then paint the flag with fabric paint, iron, to seal the paint, then put it in the wash - to waterproof it. Job done, this is the finished article, and I think this one is our best yet:

  

Moving onto the vodkas, we got the inspiration from the flavoured vodka's thread on www.efestivals.co.uk, people on there have successfully created all sorts of crazy flavours from skittles vodka to cola cube flavour, somebody is even trying out a vodka infused ketchup!
So to make the vodka, buy a bottle of vodka, not the cheap stuff, or the really expensive stuff, then chose your flavour: Our friend Kim has made vodkas before so told us how much fruit to vodka was needed. So the first two vodkas we made were a fresh raspberry one and a blueberry one. We began these before Christmas and regularly add sugar as the fruit ones were a little bitter. We then made one using Fox's dark glazier sweets, so we also have a liquorice and aniseed vodka. We don't need to add sugar to this one, as the boiled sweets have enough in. Our final vodka is a lemon sherbet one, which again only took a few weeks to do, and doesn't require any added sugar.

As you can see the raspberry one is taking its time to breakdown, and as its only 20 days till glastonbury so we are not sure which ones will make the trip down south.

Mission camping complete......

This year, instead of a chilli cook off competition, we all participated in the Saturday BBQ cook off. The results were outstanding, from Darren’s burgers and Linzi’s chicken tikka and steak in homemade whisky sauce!

The campsite we stayed at was http://www.ashfieldtouringcaravanpark.co.uk the reason we decided on this campsite was the 'aussie bbq', as you can see we used the facility well!

On Sunday, once the unpacking was completed, and the camping stuff was separated into the ‘Glastonbury pile’ and the ‘camping with luxuries pile’, thoughts were heading to the big G.

We have provisionally designed this year’s flag. We always design and make our own flag, it’s all part of the excitement build up, and it is the easiest way to find our tent amongst the 1000’s in the field! In 2009, we went with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in 2010 it was Goonies never say die, this year we have a Dangermouse theme, with a pinch of Rastamouse. Every year we also put the efestivals logo (www.efestivals.co.uk) as the message boards are both entertaining and informative and are the only thing that gets you through the long months in between Glastonbury!

We have also started with the glasto vodkas, again the efestivals message forum providing valuable advice, we have 4 on the go at the moment – Raspberry, Blackberry, Liquorice & Aniseed and Lemon sherbet. We haven’t decided which of these flavours will be making the journey south with us, in a month’s time!

The next blog will be more detailed with flag and vodka pictures!

Mr Pretzel and the glowsticks

As we were packing up the KA with all our essential camping equipment, ranging from the tent and air bed to the whisky and camping kitchen, I realised that I we would need a minor miracle, or a trailer to transport all these ‘essentials’!

Somehow we got all the stuff in the back of the KA and we were heading to a campsite in York, this was third stay at this campsite and is now known as yorkenbury – in preparation for Glasto.

We were the only ones in the tenting field, which is just the way we like it! We set up the tent, had tea, then settled down with a few cans of cold brothers strawberry cider, the laptop and the film Goodfellas – living the camping dream! 

Linz doesn’t quite get the idea of canvas being thin, and everyone can hear everything, so as we were getting ourselves sorted to bed, linz was trying to plug her phone to her charge, and said quite loudly – just put it in, I immediately wondered what the sensible looking ‘caravan folks’ in the field behind us were thinking, followed by Linz telling me to ‘put your hands on me’ in a bid to defrost my frozen hands, this led to an innuendo bingo game that continued throughout the weekend!

We live in a really quiet area of Leeds, where there are very little noisy distractions or wake up calls, so imagine my delight at 4:50am that all the birds in the field decided to sing in unison! Oh the joys of sleeping outdoors! As we were awake nice and early, Linz cooked a breakfast of champions – bacon, sausage, mushrooms, egg and bread!

As Lulu and Darren were arriving later, as they were a wedding reception, we volunteered to take and put up their tent, (yes that was two tents in the KA) we set about putting the tent up and then the winds came! We managed to hang on to it, and put it up after a fashion. We also bring a gazebo in case it rains, so we all have somewhere to hang out. (Yes, thats 2 tents and a giant gazebo in the KA).

The wind picked up, so we headed to our tent, as I turned to check lulu’s tent and the gazebo, I saw the gazebo heading into the hedge, a mess of mangled metal tubing and guy ropes, luckily we managed to grab it, and force the metal poles back into shape, and ‘duck taped’ all the snapped plastic joints. Which leads me to think, is there anything that this magic tape can’t do? It comes with me on ever camping trip and glasto, and has helped fix things at home, including the green house – magic stuff!

Friday was a day waiting for arrivals, first up Kim and Si arrived about 1:30ish, which is a respectable time considering it was Si’s birthday on Thursday and a few beverages were sampled. Next up were Ant and Lellen, who had recently bought a new giant tent, so we all sat and watched them put it (Obviously we couldn’t help them , as when they are camping in Wales they won’t be able to do it on their own – that’s our excuse, and we are sticking to it!). The innuendo bingo continued with Ant putting up the flag pole, and other such comments and giggles. Finally, Darren and Lulu rock up after 10, as the wedding had overrun, but as their tent had been expertly put up, they got in the gazebo and joined the party.

As the rain set in, we all sat under our slightly battered gazebo, in our fisherman’s chairs drinking our warming alcohol – and obviously it was only for its warming properties that the alcohol was consumed..... by the end of the night, we had solar powered fairy lights adorning the battle scared gazebo, all the occupants wearing their glow stick glasses or rabbit ears.

During the night, there were several confessions, Lellen thought that Joseph Fritzl was in fact called Joseph Pretzel and was very near to texting Radio 5 about Mr Pretzel and his crimes, that Star Wars had a character called Dart Vader, and discussions of the song ‘there is a hole my bucket, dear Nigel’ and my personal favourite a quote from the film ghostbusters – who ya gonna call – blockbusters!

In conclusion, camping should always result in adults in hoodies, wearing glowsticks, muttering happily about the weather tomorrow and that it is not that cold.......

So this is a blog......

I have never really thought about writing anything like a blog before, as I didn't think anybody would be that interested in reading what I had to say, however a twitter comment from GinslingerLeeds asking if I could write a blog about our Glastonbury trip got me thinking, maybe my experience of glastonbury might help new people prepare, or maybe convince a family who thought it was just for drunk/drugged early 20's to give it a try!
This year I will be going to glasto with my partner Linz, Lulu and Darren, and Paul, his teenage daughter Kirsty and her friend Grace.
The plan is write about the preparation for the trip, including the flag, and the all important vodka making, and I am planning to take my video camera (that sounds really retro, it doesn't actually make videos, but memory card saving recording camera doesn't have the same ring to it).
I plan to sample every bit of the giant site, and experience it all. Last year it was so hot you couldn't move around comfortably, and there was a large group of us, so Linz and myself didn't get to see all the sights we would have hoped. This year, although the group is 7 strong, Linz and I will spend most of the time 'bimbling' (glasto speak for wondering round the site).
I am hoping to capture the feeling of glasto via recording the random sites from the Kidz field to the Greenpeace fields and all in-between, not forgetting the music!
We are going camping this weekend, to try out the glasto tent, and get used to sleeping under canvas again, and also going to try out my camera skills - which currently are untested!
Well, that was my first ever blog completed, if you managed to stay awake, I will blog again after our camping trip.