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.