Glastonbury 2022 Blogs

[faymondo]

If anybody has posted any blogs about 2022 or come across some good blog posts then post them here.

I manage to get a few words out the next morning from what little I remember. Obviously do Sundays shennanagins when I get home.

Weds https://wp.me/pzmxh-2za

Thurs https://wp.me/pzmxh-2zd

Fri https://wp.me/pzmxh-2zh

Sat https://wp.me/pzmxh-2zk

Sun https://wp.me/pzmxh-2zm

[faymondo]

Got around to my review of 2022.

 

https://wp.me/pzmxh-2zE

[balti-pie]

An excellent read, ta for sharing! Pretty much the only act I went to that’s on your list is Paul McCartney, that’s what I really love about it - two people can go to the same festival and basically have two completely different weekends: you just can’t do that at most fests at all 👍

[gooner1990]

My short review of this year…for context, it was my 14^th Glastonbury in a row since 2004, went with 16 people although we were split in camping, had 6 of us (inc me) in main camping ‘behind the park’, 3 in a tipi and the rest were in Sticklinch.

I went with four of our party on a See Tickets coach from Oxford, meant to leave 6.15am, left 30 mins late as the driver seemed to think that it would only take 10 mins to load everyone’s stuff and dish all the tickets out….took nearly 40 mins, was sat at the front and he was a nice bloke spoke to him a couple of times.  Journey was uneventful and arrived at 9.45am, took 90 mins to get through the queue at Ped Gate A and made our way to meet other friends who had got set up in our usual spot…..got there about 11.40 and the field was 95% full but managed to get ourselves in and settled.  Went back to our friends car to collect our camping chairs and alcohol which was painless….we left it till about 2pm when the queues had died down.

I’ll spare reviews of specific bands but just for the record I saw nothing on the Weds apart from the fireworks at the SC, on Thurs night we went to SEC and saw ‘Pongo’ at the Truth stage, Friday was Ziggy Marley, Supergrass, Robert Plant, Bonobo, Primal Scream, Chase and Status (Arcadia), Saturday was Skunk Anansie, AJ Tracey, Haim, Noel Gallagher, Paul McCartney, Brass Against (Truth Stage set)…Sunday was a struggle as I was starting to get quite tired and only saw Angelique Kidjo, Bicep and NIA Archives.  I also saw various bits of dnb in SEC and at other late night stages.

General thoughts/feedback.

• My immediate reaction when out and about on site on Thursday AM was ‘fuck me this is crowded’, I only thought it to myself, but when our group had a big meet for some drinks at West Holts that afternoon most people who had been going for a few years all said the same to each other, I even met up with an old friend unconnected to the group I was with, the first thing he said was ‘either they’ve sold a lot more tickets than they’ve advertised or loads have jibbed in’  Another friend who has been going since the 90s said bar 2000 this was the busiest he’d seen it.   I know there is a lot of factors at play, 3 years off, decent weather (not too hot and no rain) meant everyone was out and about but virtually everything we went to was massively busy.   My personal opinion is that if its due to more tickets they need to cut it back a bit, or as others have said manage where the bands play a lot better, I also got caught in that crush going towards Arcadia/Park on the Friday night and it wasn’t pleasant.  I wouldn’t say it hampered my enjoyment of the festival, and you expect queues at big events but it did get a bit tiresome by the end of the weekend. 
• Given the (appeared) rise of attendees, possibly try to implement some sort of ‘walk on the left’ in the busy areas, a lot of the problem with traffic is people walking into each other and trying to get out of the way, if there was a system to keep things flowing that may help some of the problems a bit.
•  People stood on the outer edge of stages or ‘crusts’ as I’m now seeing them being called….again, never noticed this too much until this year, happened a lot……perhaps some sort of announcement to say ‘please make way for those who wish to stand closer as there is plenty of room in the middle’ or some such, we managed to get in for Supergrass and Skunk Anansie quite close to the set starting despite it looking like it was full from the edge when we arrived.
• Cash only at some of the bars – I don’t mind using all cash but please communicate this to people on site, a couple of times I queued up (JP field pre Primal Scream being one) and only saw it was cash only when I got to the front…luckily I had some but others did not.
•  Noticed a lack of toilets, especially in the campsites and if we could get some urinals in there that would solve so many of the big queues you see especially in the morning.

More positive vibes…. 🙂 

•  Invested in a self-inflating mat, thanks to a recommendation on here from @stuartbert two hats , worked a treat and combined with my fresh and black meant I got a good 6-7 hours sleep a night!
• Thought the general ‘vibe’ was quite good, perhaps I got lucky but I didn’t see one fight or anything all weekend apart from the couple having a massive barney in  front of me going in Weds AM.
•  See tickets coach worked a treat which was good…had us back in Oxford by 7.45am on Monday although it did mean I slept most of that day as a result of not having slept Sunday night (bar on the coach) and takes a couple of days to get your sleeping pattern back round!
• Weather was perfect for me, warm but not too hot, dry and only the odd shower to keep the dust down. If it was like that every year I would be very happy. 🙂 
•  Variety of food options was good again.
• Friendly stewards at all times, helpful when required (at least the ones I spoke to)

Conclusion is I thought it was a good year, will perhaps take me to get a few months down the line before I decide if it was a ‘classic’ or not, I think I’ve had better years (when I was younger and a lot more mates went) but it wasn’t by any stretch the worst or anything.  The weather massively helped that but as mentioned above I did feel it was a little overcrowded but what caused that I’m not too sure, we attempted to get into the Temple at 4.15am on Saturday night and there was still a massive queue outside….never seen that before.   I think I’ve also seen that the festival is well and truly for everyone now as others have said as other festivals have folded Glastonbury has mopped up not only their attendees but their headliners too hence why a lot more people from cross-sections of society want to go now.  I would agree that the turning point was the 2008 Jay-Z booking and its steadily gone on from there….I think the only American headliners before that were REM and The Killers and now you have at least one A list per year.  

I think that those of us like me that have been going for a while (and those that have been going longer!) we have to just accept that it’s a very, very popular event now, when I was a teenager in the 90s I had to seek out the coverage on C4 and then BBC2 and didn’t really know anyone else who watched it, I’ve now come into work this morning for the first time since last week and at least five people have asked me about it and told me what they watched at home…its rammed down everyone’s throat like Wimbledon has been the past week or two as well.  The more exposure it has the more people want to go and tick it off that ‘bucket list’ and I think that will continue for the foreseeable future.

See you for the bun fight in October. 🙂 

[faymondo]

10 hours ago, balti-pie said:

An excellent read, ta for sharing! Pretty much the only act I went to that’s on your list is Paul McCartney, that’s what I really love about it - two people can go to the same festival and basically have two completely different weekends: you just can’t do that at most fests at all 👍

Spot on. We went with a gang of 7 including my wife and I went to Avalanches, Luke Una and Nightmares on Wax on my own. 

[faymondo]

Latest blog with pictures I took on my "good" camera at this years festival

https://wp.me/pzmxh-2Aa

[Cheesey]

On 6/29/2022 at 11:07 PM, balti-pie said:

Pretty much the only act I went to that’s on your list is Paul McCartney, that’s what I really love about it - two people can go to the same festival and basically have two completely different weekends: you just can’t do that at most fests at all 👍

I was talking to my son about this. He's 12, and this was the first year that he really understood the scale of the place. At one point he was lamenting things that he was missing, and I pointed out that at every moment you're missing 99.9% of the festival, but so is everyone else! You have to just let it go and enjoy what you're doing. If you're really not enjoying something, move on.

Everyone you see there is having a different festival. There isn't just one Glastonbury - there are 200,000 Glastonburys happening simultaneously 🙂