Disastrous journey to Glastonbury...

[Laura_Babs]

See below. Just posted the story below on another thread and curious to know if anyone else has had a disastrous journey down that turned out Ok and they can now laugh about?

Here it is:

Actually....I have a bad coach story which I will tell on behalf of my friend.

This friend is someone who I have been friends with since I was 11 but we drifted apart after school. We got back in touch about three months before last years Glastonbury and I gave her the festival bug. We all already had our tickets except her. She bought hers in about May and had just started a new job. As a result she felt bad taking all the time off so she decided to take just the Friday and Monday as it seemed more reasonable than Wed and Thurs as well.

So she booked a coach down there. On the Thursday she was going to get the bus to the train station (she always gets the bus too and from work). A nice colleague offered to give her a lift to the train station instead so she didn't have to lug all her stuff around. So nice colleague gives her a lift and traffic is really heavy. she arrives at the train station having missed the train by 2 minutes. More trains go from the other train station so she decides to get a tram to the other train station. She gets to other station and hops on a train. By this point her coach is leaving in 5 minutes and she has a 20 minute train journey still and then a 5 minute walk to Victoria coach station! She hopes that the coach will be delayed.

She gets to Victoria and runs to the coach station and the coach has left. To top it off this friend literally has no money on her as she spent the last money on her train fare and gets paid at midnight. So she tries to negotiate another coach but there aren't any. She then calls her mother and begs her to book her a train ticket that she can pick up. So her kind mother books her a train ticket from Paddington to Castle Carey which leaves in 40 minutes!

She still has the problem of getting across London without any money. So she rushes to Victoria and speaks to a London Underground person and tries to explain that if they call her mother, she will pay by card on the phone. The woman is unhelpful and says she needs to find the manager. So the friend manages to find station manager (with no help from woman), lets call him Jeff, who turns out to be lovely! He asks what time her train is and realises that there isn't much time. He lets her through the barriers and tells her to say at Paddington that 'Jeff at Victoria said it was OK to come through'.

She makes it to Paddington, gets on her train and breathes a sigh of relief. She made it and we found her in the pouring rain at about 11pm wondering around in front of the Pyramid in the pitch black.

Needless to say she will be coming by car this year with us, having booked 8 days off work, just to be on the safe side!

[Toilet Duck]

Yay for "Jeff at Victoria"!...

[Laura_Babs]

Yay for "Jeff at Victoria"!...

[lofichic]

We drove down last year, making ace time. Decided to stop about 6am at Gloucester for some breakfast. I'd found the truck stop online, we weaved through some random roads off the motorway, pulled in - truck stop has shut down about 5 days before, but not updated their website.

Balls.

So, we decide to just finish the journey and eat once we get to Glasto. Go to pull off, the car won't start. Turns out the clutch is buggered!!! We have to wait ages for the RAC. They initially say around 4 hours, but we sweet talk them on the phone about how we're poor stranded girls and are worried waiting that long, so it only takes about an hour.

We end up getting a taxi (through the RAC) ALL the way to Glasto, hahaah. We'd have been on site then by about 12, but then we had to wait in the queues of all queues from the drop off point.

We should have been there for gates opening, but we finally start pitching our tents about 4pm. Still, once you've got that first pint of spicy in your hand, it all doesn't matter anymore

[Laura_Babs]

We drove down last year, making ace time. Decided to stop about 6am at Gloucester for some breakfast. I'd found the truck stop online, we weaved through some random roads off the motorway, pulled in - truck stop has shut down about 5 days before, but not updated their website.

Balls.

So, we decide to just finish the journey and eat once we get to Glasto. Go to pull off, the car won't start. Turns out the clutch is buggered!!! We have to wait ages for the RAC. They initially say around 4 hours, but we sweet talk them on the phone about how we're poor stranded girls and are worried waiting that long, so it only takes about an hour.

We end up getting a taxi (through the RAC) ALL the way to Glasto, hahaah. We'd have been on site then by about 12, but then we had to wait in the queues of all queues from the drop off point.

We should have been there for gates opening, but we finally start pitching our tents about 4pm. Still, once you've got that first pint of spicy in your hand, it all doesn't matter anymore

[lofichic]

oh no! The cider does make it all better though, your right. What did you do with the car?! And how much was a taxi from Gloucester!? A small fortune I bet!!!???

[karlpowell]

we were once made to park at the other side of the festival , and had to lug all our gear all the way across the site , it took us 3 joint stops and 4 cans of lager stops to maker that journey .

[mozzy]

Had some nightmare journeys home but nothing too alarming on the way to Glastonbury, the only minor shock was in 03 when we were on the train to London Victoria en route to meeting friends at Paddington when we realised we'd left the tent in the hallway at home. Cue sharp exit at the next station & a wait and return mini cab ride. We still made it to Paddington before the rest of the people travelling with us so had time for a pint while we waited!

[Laura_Babs]

Had some nightmare journeys home but nothing too alarming on the way to Glastonbury, the only minor shock was in 03 when we were on the train to London Victoria en route to meeting friends at Paddington when we realised we'd left the tent in the hallway at home. Cue sharp exit at the next station & a wait and return mini cab ride. We still made it to Paddington before the rest of the people travelling with us so had time for a pint while we waited!

[tarff26]

Driving down from Glasgow in 2002 we were diverted around Silverstone because of the British Grand Prix (something to do with flodded car parks i think). I - the navigator - was fast asleep so my mate just kept on driving. And driving....... I woke up just as we were driving into Luton!

So an at worst 8 hour journey turned into a 13 hour cross country mystery tour.

To make matters worse when we got back to the car on Monday morning my mate had left the radio on meaning the battery was drained. We had to wait 7 hours for an RAC man to come and juice it back up before we could hit the road

[remote]

Just as we were leaving 2 years ago, my friends came to mine to pick me up, the driver opened the boot and I chucked all the stuff in, got into the back of the car. The lad sitting in the passenger seat decided he needed something out of his bag and walked to the back of the car, he took what he wanted and as he moved away, the driver slammed the boot shut, right on his hand. Cue a 3 hour wait at A+E at 4am whilst he had his hand put in plaster. He'd broken his hand in a pretty bad way. Whilst sitting there, the other person in the car decides she best to check on last time she has her ticket, she hadn't. So in one way, it's a good thing we were still here when she realised or we could've been quite close to Glastonbury and she'd be ticketless.

[LusciousLucy]

Not exactly a night mare journey but in 95 chum and I made sure we got to the site in very good time by driving all the way from Sussex to Bridgewater to stay at her aunt's the night before. Got to site bright and early only to notice the couple we were going to be camping from Tunny Wells were only 4 cars behind us in the queue! OK, they had left at ungodly in the morning but it was a monir annoyance cos we needn't have mished all the way to BW.

2 other chums from T Wells came down on a motorbike that year and when James went to find the tix in his top pocket of his jacket, the wallet with tix and all party money wasnt there!!! Nothing to worry about though...they went and sat in the field behind the Stone Circle and joined the throngs that eventually pushed down the fence and through the wall of policemen! They made up the lost money by selling off some of their stash and doing face painting+hair braiding and then about 3 weeks later the postman delivered the wallet with £200 and both tickets still inside! It had been dropped at the entrance as they pulled in and an Oxfam steward found it! Yay!