2016's Glastonbury will forever be remembered as a 'muddy one'

For many veteran attendees of Glastonbury Festival the years are not marked by the acts that played or the entertainment on offer but by the weather and the mud, and in this respect 2016's Glastonbury will forever be remembered as the "muddy one."

 

Whilst it's founder, farmer Michael Eavis, may have declared it the muddiest ever, those that were there put it alongside the mud years of 1978, many of the Eighties years, the bad back to back years of 1997 and 1998, and what still for many was the worst year ever 2007.

 

The reason Eavis said the mud may have been worst ever and yet for many it wasn't as bad as 2007 is the advances made in dealing with mud. Organisers have improved the site's drainage, bridges, watercourses, and employ extensive metal trackway. They restrict vehicle access, keep fields closed until needed, use pumps, scrape the gloop up with tractors, and deploy bales and bales of straw and by all accounts "every single bit of woodchip in the south of England."

 

 

Right from the first day, when at the last minute the campervan arrival time was pushed back in the hope that the fields already soggy from days of rain would have time to dry, there were long queues and problems getting onto mud churned fields. Bath & West Showground became a campervan field as access onto car parks and CV fields ground to a halt. The problem became a major headache and organisers sent out a message asking people to delay their arrival as they tried to cope with so many trying to arrive early.

 

Mud and rain also forces all of us into the arms of technology, now smartphones can last the duration soggy wet programmes and clashfinders are replaced by the App and everyone suddenly has their phones turned on. Texts whilst delayed get through, lost friends can be found, and it's all happening without us really noticing. Until one morning the whole system crashes and we all realise how much we rely on technology in a muddy year.

 

Wet festivals are always a trial and for those living in the tented city it's made more difficult by the sheer scale and distances involved. Restricted movement means more queues. Movement is easier when the mud is slicky but as it dries the high clay content makes it thick and resistant - wellies get stuck. Legs ache as they work increasingly hard to keep shoes made heavier by an ever growing cludge of mud moving through the gloop. In some of the less well remembered muddy years, eventually the ground is compacted down and hardens making walking easier on a bouncy firm ground. However it continued to rain in spells rarely heavily but prolonged enough to stop the mud drying out and so the whole site became an obstacle course. Even the usual escapes from mud on the west side of the railway in Green Futures, the Healing, Craft, and Greenpeace fields became muddy. Only the wide expanses on the Festival's flanks of Flagtopia, and the Stone Circle offered a green respite.

 

 

 

 

Yes Glastonbury is about so much more than weather and mud, but that maybe what it will be remembered for this year. Okay so Coldplay's crowd illuminated wristbands, and Adele's warming performance probably will also stand the test of time. People will remember fondly a myriad of individual performances they saw across it's multiple stages, and recall the creative venues, crazy installations and visual treats, but primarily it will be one of those legendary 'muddy years'. There is so, so much more to this Festival and it's inhabitants than can ever be transmitted to those sat at home on their sofas it's so much more than a series of mass gigs in a field. To list everything else that just I witnessed would take pages and pages and make very stilted reading but suffice it to say Glastonbury has more crazy characters, surprise happenings and surprise pop up venues than any other festival anywhere. It also has a huge choice of food on offer, although for farmhouse scrumpy drinkers the choice was less this year.