Thinking of getting the Coach to Glasto ...

[Wooden]

Gonna be traveling from Carlisle, so its gonna be a good 6 - 7 hour drive i'd say, never been to Glasto before but i can imagine getting in / out the festival is a bit of a nightmare.

It'd cost about £70 - £80 in fuel to get down, the bus is £152 for 2 of us.

Anyone use the coach travel to get there, pro's and cons ?

Cheers

[Guest musiclove123]

Gonna be traveling from Carlisle, so its gonna be a good 6 - 7 hour drive i'd say, never been to Glasto before but i can imagine getting in / out the festival is a bit of a nightmare.

It'd cost about £70 - £80 in fuel to get down, the bus is £152 for 2 of us.

Anyone use the coach travel to get there, pro's and cons ?

Cheers

[Kyelo]

Gonna be traveling from Carlisle, so its gonna be a good 6 - 7 hour drive i'd say, never been to Glasto before but i can imagine getting in / out the festival is a bit of a nightmare.

It'd cost about £70 - £80 in fuel to get down, the bus is £152 for 2 of us.

Anyone use the coach travel to get there, pro's and cons ?

Cheers

[HurrahBrother]

Pros- don't have to worry about driving. Takes you right into the site

Cons-shit service (a coach nearly left without us, no toilet on one, nasty staff, unorganised) only one service station stop, you are tide to the times for pickup and leaving (usually awful times) and generally a rip off. One had no air con and it was agony

Edited April 5, 2010 by HurrahBrother

[goldfishboy]

seetickets' coaches are very badly organised! i went with them the first year of the combined tickets, the driver didn't know where he was going, and i looked out at one point to see the baggage hold open and all our rucksacks tumbling down a hill behind us...

Edited April 6, 2010 by goldfishboy

[Kyelo]

...i looked out at one point to see the baggage hold open and all our rucksacks tumbling down a hill behind us...

[bunchy]

Wouldn't recommend the See Tickets coach option...done that and what a bloody shambles that was!!

National Express are excellent though...used them last year.

I'm getting the NE coach from Carlisle too... Wednesday morning at 02:50am

[Wooden]

It was the National Express coach i was looking at, i was kinda expecting a few horror stories, i'm just not looking forward to the 7 hour drive, its more the drive home i'm not looking forward to, i imagine you'll be queing for a bit to get out, then the long slog home.

Is there a limit on how much luggage you can take ? we'd have rucksacks, tents, chairs, beer, food and usually a gazebo. Take it you'd need to put your name all over crates of beer so noone half inches them

Bunchy - aye that was the one i was looking at, get on the bus, go to kip, wake up at Glasto !!

[ukslim]

I think it's only reasonable to pack light if you're getting the coach. If everyone took chairs, gazebos etc. it wouldn't all fit on.

Pros: It's easy and stress free - meet coach, sit on coach reading a book, disembark right by the gate. I'd rather read a book/sleep/etc. for 5 hours than drive for 4 hours.

Cons: Standing in a queue for an hour or so on Monday morning.

[Wooden]

I think it's only reasonable to pack light if you're getting the coach. If everyone took chairs, gazebos etc. it wouldn't all fit on.

[Wooden]

Found this on the NE website ....

What luggage can I carry on a National Express coach?

The luggage allowance for each passenger is a maximum of two medium sized suitcases weighing no more than 20kg each and one piece of hand luggage. Hand luggage must be capable of fitting in the overhead luggage racks or under seats. If you do carry more than this allowance we cannot guarantee that we will be able to accommodate the excess baggage. Space can often be of a premium and we cannot predict what luggage other passengers on the same journey may bring.

Is there anything I can't take with me?

Although there are many items you can carry on board a coach, there are a few items that National Express do not allow, to ensure the safety and comfort of other passengers and their luggage. Unfortunately we are unable to carry items that are perishable including meat and fish, and other items that may be fragile or have sharp or protruding edges.

A full list of items that are not allowed on board are detailed below:

We kindly request that you do not bring the following items within your luggage:

•Any weapons

•Drugs or solvents (other than medicines)

•Live or dead animals

•Fish or insects

•Battery powered wheelchairs/disabled scooters, unless they are pre-booked

•Prams

•Non folding pushchairs

•Non folding bicycles

Any other items considered unsuitable for carriage by reason of their weight, size, shape or character.

Skis and surfboards can be carried but are subject to space being available.

So your looking at 40kg each plus a bit of hand luggage, time to have a quick weigh up.

[HurrahBrother]

Though the reality can be a little different.

generally you want to get down to a tent bag, large ruck sack and some bag to take with you on the coach.

There have been people lifting on sack trucks of beer, but that is purely at the drivers discretion.

Don't bother with much food, there is lots of great grub on site.

Beer? Spirits in plastic bottles is better, get mixers on site.

Chairs, if they can fit on the overhead racks, you can pack them as well.

Make sure you can walk half an hour or more when carrying everything!

When you get there, there are the following schools of thought,

-Pitch close to the coach station, 'cause you only have to lug it back again on Monday

- Cash rucksack in at the lock ups by the gate, take tent to where you want to pitch it, go back and get ruck sack. Do the reverse on Monday.

- Apply the sod it school of thought (sod it! i've walked far enough, there is a good looking pitch there)

- Hook up with one of the e-fest camps

[ukslim]

Thats why i asked if there was a luggage limit, i imagine everybody will have a decent size rucsac and a good few crates of drink / food.

[LEDZEP66]

I got the national express coach from Nottingham last year and will be doing it again this year.

Due to the traffic issues being able to chill out on the coach was brilliant, everyone was making the most of it and having a good laugh. Obviously this year will be different as we will just drive straight through.

Luggage wise pretty much everyone had a large rucksack, tent bag and either a chair or crate of beer and everything went in the luggage hold without any problems and the coach was up to full capacity.

You can always buy chairs on site for 5 or 10 quid if you don't want to risk it though

The best thing about the coach though is coming home. You will be booked on to a specific coach and will have a specific time to leave, ours was 10 minutes late so not bad at all. Within 5 minutes everyone was fast asleep, woke up 3 hours later as we pulled into a service station had a bit to eat back on the coach for a couple of hours then was home. If there are problems getting out of the site as there has been in previous years you will be glad your on the coach.

1 Tip though, take lots of water. We had a proper heavy one on the Sunday so we all needed loads of water, when you leave the exit there was no where to get water from and it was boiling that day. We had 1 small bottle of water which we had to ration, had shots of water every 30 mins.

In my view the national express bus is the best way to go, I've been on the train twice as well and driven once and coach wins hands down

[ukslim]

1 Tip though, take lots of water. We had a proper heavy one on the Sunday so we all needed loads of water, when you leave the exit there was no where to get water from and it was boiling that day. We had 1 small bottle of water which we had to ration, had shots of water every 30 mins.

[Kyelo]

Which reminds me - in the queue for the shuttles last year, a steward came round handing out free water. Brilliant. You'd never have got that kind of attention to detail when the hippies where in charge (fun though it was).

[tonibw]

I went by National Express and it was fine. There were huge queues at the coach station on the Wednesday, but there were loads of coaches too, so they organised it well. The only hitch was that the driver took a wrong turn, completely ignoring all the signs for Glastonbury at one particular round about, but it only held us up for about 20 minutes. Leaving was fine too, completely avoided the massive car queues which was nice! It took about 5 1/2ish hours as I was travelling to/from Manchester, but it was fine - on the way there there was lots of excited banter, and on the way back everyone just slept!

The coach driver let crates of beer etc in the hold with no problem too.

The only bad experiences I've had with festival coaches is getting to Leeds, even though it's less than 2 hours drive from Manchester! The coach has always been late, got stuck in the car queue, had no toilet and no service station break. Grim.

[goldfishboy]

so i'm now considering getting a national express coach home from glasto this year - never done it before - how easy is it to get on to the coach you've reserved a seat on? or is it a free-for-all scrum as with the trains?

[tjefffrench]

I bought national express tickets for me and my misses for this year's glasto

and this thread has put my mind at rest about getting to and from glasto

thanks!

[wend1980]

Am getting the coach for the first time this year after many years of negotiating the perils of catle cary. Therefore will post my coach opinion from the 29th June. Sorry thats not much help for your query. I suppose I am, too, looking for coach reassurance

[rexclark]

We're getting the National Express coach from Glasgow so hopefully won't encounter too many problems.

[Wooden]

Another quick Q .... say we get the coach from Carlisle, is that its set off point or will it already have came from say Glasgow, after a pick up there ? Or is it a dedicated coach that just picks folk up from carlisle and heads straight to Glasto ?