Driving from North West

[gherkin8r]

Looking like we are driving down to the festival this year on Wednesday morning from Liverpool. It's 15 years since I last did this so no idea what traffic is like or whether we will be able to leave early enough to avoid biblical traffic.

Can anyone who drives down to the festival from the north west help with what times they have left and arrived at? 

[Walter Sobchak]

I think you'd need to leave at 3am to miss the traffic.  

We are leaving North Wales around 9am and hoping most of the mad traffic will have cleared by the time we get there.

[Gnomicide]

There's pros and cons whichever way you do it. Go through the night or leave very early hours and the roads are quiet but you can hit motorway closures and end up on mad diversions.

Leave at 7 or 8 am and you'll have rush hour traffic to deal with in the early parts but it should be clearer from Birmingham onwards. The one time we left at 7am it was largely plain sailing until we hit the worst traffic we've ever experienced as we got 15 miles from the festival, but that was 2016 so hard to judge against normal years.

I've done coach leaving Liverpool at 9am and 10am and the traffic seemed fine.

Having said that, the 2016 experience still gives me nightmares so we now leave Liverpool at 5pm Tuesday and sleep in the car park overnight. 

[Crazyfool01]

4hours journey ish , shouldn’t hit rush hours that time of day and should drive into carparks I reckon 3 am would be the least risk … but then you just swap car queues for pedestrian queues … 

[Avalon_Fields]

It’s a challenge to plan this journey, the M6 leading to the M5 North of Birmingham is usually dreadful for at least 3 hours in the morning. Best to avoid by leaving no later than 5am or waiting until after 9. Maybe 50% of the time you’ll get some delays on the M6 anytime during the day. I lost 2 hours on the way back last year. In my experience 4hrs in total is optimistic unless it’s through the night. 

[gherkin8r]

There are 3 kids coming with us in the car. The more I think about it the more I'm leaning towards driving down Tuesday and staying somewhere nearby. When I drove in 2009 it took us several hours to do the last 10 miles or so and I'm not willing to risk that. Was considering driving down off the ferry which gets into Liverpool at 0630 but fear I may regret that

Edited January 13, 2024 by gherkin8r

[Crazyfool01]

11 minutes ago, gherkin8r said:

There are 3 kids coming with us in the car. The more I think about it the more I'm leaning towards driving down Tuesday and staying somewhere nearby. When I drove in 2009 it took us several hours to do the last 10 miles or so and I'm not willing to risk that. Was considering driving down off the ferry which gets into Liverpool at 0630 but fear I may regret that

clearing the roads does seem quicker these days 2016 an exception to that , but you never know it only takes one issue to f**k it up 

[gherkin8r]

16 minutes ago, Crazyfool01 said:

clearing the roads does seem quicker these days 2016 an exception to that , but you never know it only takes one issue to f**k it up 

This is it. Serious handling with kids and gear these days. 

[Avalon_Fields]

1 hour ago, gherkin8r said:

There are 3 kids coming with us in the car. The more I think about it the more I'm leaning towards driving down Tuesday and staying somewhere nearby. When I drove in 2009 it took us several hours to do the last 10 miles or so and I'm not willing to risk that. Was considering driving down off the ferry which gets into Liverpool at 0630 but fear I may regret that

Sounds sensible, book your accommodation asap 

[dotdash79]

We travel on Tuesday day and stay off site over night get up at 4:30 am shower then leave for site and queue. 
 

this is coming from Manchester 

Edited January 13, 2024 by dotdash79

[amfy]

Before we started volunteering which has sorted out the traffic issues, we’d taken to going to the Dorset coast for a couple of days before the festival, (Charmouth, Beer, Lyme Regis) it’s a surprisingly short and straightforward trip in from that direction, as there is a more limited number of people coming directly from the south & you seem to just pop up only about a mile from the festival gates! 
It’s a nice addition to the festival week too. 

 

[adamg1602]

We normally set off from the m53 at 6ish. You don't need to set off at 3am, you're missing a night's sleep that way. 

I think 2010 there was really bad traffic driving in on the Wednesday so we changed our route.

We come off at m5 junction 22 and go through Mark, Wedmore and through to Wells. There's never any traffic on them roads. Head to North Wooton and get on the Higher Westholme Rd. This will bring you out right into Pilton by the Crown pub. From there you can pick which car park you want. 

It takes 4 hours hours ish with one stop. We stop at asda cribbs causeway in Bristol. It's a good place to stop for any bits you may have forgotten.

We've been using this route for years and have never been stuck in traffic

 

 

[sfroml]

We set off about 07:30 on the Wednesday morning from Yorkshire which was a massive mistake..... I based setting off then on my previous experience which was way back in 2008. Basically, we crawled through a heap of traffic and then were told the north west carparks were full so we had to use blue parking... Then when we actually got through to wristbands we were told the only camping where there was a bit of space was the south west of the site. 

Needless to say it was an hour long trek which did little to lift our mood..... 

So, if we get tix in April we would definitely set off the night before, probably about 22:00.

[Alvoram]

Blue Route from the North (M5) was still horrendous right up until early evening on Wednesday last year... We'd left Derby (normally around a 3 hour drive) at 6:30am hoping to arrive around midday, had allowed a couple of hours for extra traffic. We joined the traffic miles out at around 10:30am and we didn't get on to our pitch until around 4pm... 

The year before we were using Yellow route on the other side, and sailed straight through at around 11am via Glastonbury town without seeing any traffic whatsoever...

I think a lot depends on your route, and a dash of luck. 

[Popsider75]

I had a spell of leaving St. Helens Wednesday night at midnight and with a coffee stop on the way used to arrive at first light so maybe 4am-4.30. No traffic at all and no queues to get on site. Used to camp just inside Gate A and always plenty of room. Perfect.

That was pre motorhome days for me. 

 

 

[bob323]

I've set off around 11pm Tues with the kids and got there (with minor stops) 4ish kids carried on sleeping in car. I took most of stuff (sack truck) and joined the queue and missues joined me later with the kids in the queue - worked out ok-ish,  my sleep was scewed though for wed

Edited January 14, 2024 by bob323

[Pinhead]

Yeah I have to do the M58, M6, M5, M4 run to it. Stay in Bath until midnight Wed. Wouldn't risk the motorways on the day as they are so very unpredictable these days what with one breakdown bringing it to a halt and woe betide an accident which will close them and they'll kick you off to run around the A roads until you find your way back on adding hours to the trip.

[MMMarc1720]

We are driving from Scotland on the Tuesday and have a hotel booked in Weston Super-Mare area for Tuesday night. Google maps shows it being 45 mins from hotel to the farm… I know that time on Glastonbury Wednesday will not be accurate. In terms of leaving the hotel Wednesday morning what time would you guys suggest? 

[neil93]

we set off from Birmingham m6 travel lodge last year (from Scotland, and pitched up there for the night to break the journey up) at around 7am, and according to my phone we were at the camp site by 12.50. There was a pit stop at Asda included there as well. 

There was a bit of a queue to get in, gate D we used but it moved pretty quickly. probably took about 1 hour in total.

if any of that is any use what so ever.

Edited January 15, 2024 by neil93

[paulshane]

9 hours ago, MMMarc1720 said:

We are driving from Scotland on the Tuesday and have a hotel booked in Weston Super-Mare area for Tuesday night. Google maps shows it being 45 mins from hotel to the farm… I know that time on Glastonbury Wednesday will not be accurate. In terms of leaving the hotel Wednesday morning what time would you guys suggest? 

I live near WSM, it'll be a few hours, me and a few friends used to convoy over at about 7am, and would be in east camper by 10am ish, you'll hit rush hour in shepton, and obviously, everyone else on their way. So depending on how early you can get up, a 6am start would shave off quite a bit of time.

I now have the luxury of getting to east camper on the Tuesday, so mush less traffic.

 

 

[MMMarc1720]

1 hour ago, paulshane said:

I live near WSM, it'll be a few hours, me and a few friends used to convoy over at about 7am, and would be in east camper by 10am ish, you'll hit rush hour in shepton, and obviously, everyone else on their way. So depending on how early you can get up, a 6am start would shave off quite a bit of time.

I now have the luxury of getting to east camper on the Tuesday, so mush less traffic.

 

 

Thanks for this mate. No issue with setting off early so will head around then - first time going and what a buzz!