The good and the bad…

[Spindles]

I use a small canvas military surplus satchel that I bought at my first festival in 1994 that is somehow still going strong.  Suncream, hand sanitizer, tissues, rizlas baccie and tin, emergency poncho, water bottle and a few cans.  Everything I need to be out and about.  It doesn't take up much space, can swing in front or behind me depending on the type of space I'm in.  At gigs it hangs in front of me and I can use it as a little table to skin up on.

[The Nal]

Can someone do a venn diagram of the "day bag" crowd, the "trips back to the car" crowd and the "blokes who sit down when they piss" crowd?

[balti-pie]

You may well deride us satchel types, but youre first in the queue when i'm dishing out bags of nuts and fizzy snakes aintcha

[MrHew]

The bad

Working the bar between Levels and Firmly Rooted stages meant 2 different rhythms going through my brain at volume for 6 hours at a time. Headf**k.

 

The good

Everything else.

[Monty Pythagoras]

GOOD

Pissing in the designated areas

Kneecap and the Irish in general

Strummerville

Getting a cup of tea at 3am

 

BAD

Pissing on the land

Really obvious booking errors

The SE Corner getting way too busy

Loads of people doing NOS

[Ell99]

The Good

 

Toilet, water and food - never felt like I had to queue for more than 5 mins for any of these - obviously there was some strategic planning that went into this, but overall great! 

Friendliness of the crowd - didn't see any animosity or nasty business and felt like everyone was up for it!

Some stunning sunsets

Just popping into random tents/stages - saw some great things in Crows Nest, Croissant Neuf, Glasto Latino, and Peace Stage, Glade, Small World Stage. Sad that I didn't make it into Arrivals, HMS Sweet Charity, Scissors, Wishing Well - the smaller more intimate venues are always my favourite.

Little Simz > Coldplay was a magical couple of hours.

Had a wonderful Friday night in SEC with some dear friends - one of those nights where the stars aligned! We somehow snuck through the one way system to get into SEC by going into the Open Arms bar by Greenpeace. This was at a time when the SEC was shut so we got very lucky! 

I loved the Woodsies area - would have loved to see some late night ambient music at the Tree Stage but never made it unfortunately.

This was my 5th glasto and I'm always just blown away by the attention to detail in every little nook and cranny. truly is a remarkable feat!

Only saw 5 mins of Arcadia and they were playing an aboriginie song between acts - was really impressed by the sound, projections and spectacle of it.

 

The Bad

When we left the Rumshack for Bicep - quickly aborted that mission after 2 minutes seeing how dense the crowd was! Same applied for Skream and Benga on the Thurs which we aborted. Avril was also rammed but we were strategically placed during Shania to get there okay.

Always a bit disheartening when you want to go somewhere to be greeted by a huge queue. Name of the game I guess though! 

Woodchip at West Holts was a big annoying - but I assume necessary for the build. 

[Quark]

3 hours ago, The Nal said:

Can someone do a venn diagram of the "day bag" crowd, the "trips back to the car" crowd and the "blokes who sit down when they piss" crowd?

nothing wrong with a posh wee

[Mark E. Spliff]

3 hours ago, MrHew said:

The bad

Working the bar between Levels and Firmly Rooted stages meant 2 different rhythms going through my brain at volume for 6 hours at a time. Headf**k.

 

We walked past your bar on the Sunday and all thanked god we weren't working there for exactly that reason!  A noisy bar I can cope with using earplugs, but being equidistant from 2 stages would be stressful!

[ourkid1984]

8 hours ago, The Nal said:

 

20 years of going now and never had a "day bag" apart from the Guardian rope bags a couple of times years ago.

 

2 bottles in the side pockets of my shorts, one with wine and one with water, but not always water as theres taps everwhere for a quick drink, a hipflask, phone and wallet in pockets, jumper around the waist.

 

The day bag crowds are the worst. One of these losers spilled my drink this year turning around. I was genuinely bewildered by the amount of sh*t he mustve had in the bag.

 

 

Oh yeah?!!

  

 

I get what you're saying about not needing more than a rope bag but tried that before and just felt weighed down the whole time. I feel the cold so bad that I needed a hoody or flannel shirt and a coat on every evening. Too much to carry in pockets and around my waist and was able to carry my wife's stuff. It's all about being respectful of other people though and taking it off in packed crowds and putting it between the feet instead of in front. 

[themunn]

The Bad

Queueing with 2 mates and 2 trolleys between the three of us to get out of the site and doing a car run, when we get to the front the jobsworth at the gate told my mate he had to go to the BACK of the non-trolley queue because he couldn't let people out without a trolley in that queue (even though he was with us!). A good joke we thought but no he was serious! 10 mins later and our mate gets to rejoin us and of course loads of trolleys have come through attached to multiple people since the guy was jobsworthing elsewhere at that point. At Glasto!! 

 

 

The Good

Literally everything else!

So close to a perfect glasto, ruined by 10 minutes of unnecessary queueing (the glasto cardinal sin!) 

[bob323]

On 7/4/2024 at 11:37 AM, efcfanwirral said:

Slightly different to what you guys are talking about, but as it was our first time volunteering it was also our first Tuesday. I couldn't believe the people queueing at Gate B from mid afternoon. We saw them at around 6pm and someone said they'd been there since at least 2! They were on the beers in the sun and in great spirits. Fair to say they were not as bouncy when we walked past at 5.30am Weds on the way to our shift...

 

those at the front of Gate B said they had got there at around 12pm, two bloke with them where wasted though.

 

Bad:

- SE corner needs a revamp, feels like the same old stuff year after year

- crowds - who did the scheduling?!?!?!

- Thursday - wtf... please put a few things that are big on to reduce the crowds - bring back williams green big tent

- Massive sound bleed in pilton palias and the T&C area,

- Carberet tent needed few better acts - a quiet a few was repeated from last year with even the same jokes

- toilets around the park and the market was a not sized properly thus they had massive queues

 

 

Good:

- Green futures field seemed to be really much better, 3 late night areas as well (although you can't buy alcohol at them)

- Taps bar was less busy and doable (except thursday)

- I liked the music line up in general - except the queues

- prices haven't gone daft

- the queue at the merch store was better - assuming the online store worked

- the pier seemed to be a little better  - eg the fat bloke with chips/ beer / union jack shorts sat on the deck chair, sticking two fingers up at you was simple but really funny

- I thought terminal 1 was good

- everyone seemed to be very happy

 

Edited Friday at 07:18 PM by bob323

[incident]

1 minute ago, bob323 said:

Good:

Green futures field seemed to be really much better, 3 late night areas as well (although you can't buy alcohol at them)

 

😏

[bob323]

Just now, incident said:

 

😏

dam! i didn't think about asking around. I had enough on me though to last the night (and more)

[dizzymoo]

On 7/4/2024 at 1:47 PM, Fearless_Fish said:

The Good!

 

The weather!

 

The bands! As echoed above, didn't see any bad sets. Maybe one underwhelming set, two that were fine, and the rest were absolutely cracking.

 

The food! Mainly because of the thread on here recommending options, and the app allowing me to find them, every meal I had was great (barring some chips in Silver Hayes en route back to the tent one night. But can't quibble about a single portion of chips!).

 

The Bad!

 

I couldn't get the until Thursday evening. Boo!

 

The See coaches back home. It was all a bit chaos. The 11:30 to Leeds was called bang on time, then we eventually got on the bus at 13:10. So instead of chilling on the grass we were all crushed forward at the front of the queue for ages. Then they decided to change the gate so trying to get a couple hundred people to pass through the other existing queues became bedlam. By the sounds of it multiple coaches were up to 3 hours late. It's not ideal when you have to wait for hours and there's no food available. The festival do seem to give up a bit on a Monday morning, whether that's getting cars out the car park or emptying the toilets.

 

The destruction of peaceful or more chilled areas in favour of banging noise. The sad demise of Avalon has already been mentioned. It used to be a place I loved to chill during the day, and the Avalon Cafe (no longer there) was always a firm favourite to head to after hours for a knees-up to a fun band. Further to this; the Tiny Tea Tent is unbearable now with Greenpeace banging out repetitive dance music at unbearable levels next door. Some of my favourite Glasto memories are of sitting in the TTT and chatting nonsense to strangers until 4am - often with punters putting on an impromptu performance on the piano and getting the tent singing along! Never saw anyone playing the piano this year because even the pianist wouldn't be able to hear it. Couldn't talk to my girlfriend in there let alone spark up a conversation with strangers.

Absolutely this.  TTT had always been a favourite place to chill, but this year it was unbearable. 

Weighing up this year there were loads of positives: friendly crowd even in crushes, Arcadia, more places to sit, loos generally clean, and some fabulous performances from Aurora, Bob Vylan (unusually, sound for them was actually a bit too quiet!), Coldplay and Justice. 

But the sound issues were an overwhelming negative.  For a festival which is at least in part about trying to be sustainable, why waste so much power making bands too loud to listen to?  Part of the joy in previous years has been wandering about and stopping to sit down to rest and listen to a band you've never heard.  This year there was precious little opportunity for this as sound was generally too loud, harsh, badly mixed, or being obliterated by music blaring out of bars too near the stage - why are they even allowed to have their systems on while artists are performing onstage?  My autistic son loves the festival, but by Saturday this year he was so overwhelmed he was seriously considering getting the train home.  We managed to get through the day chilling in T&C and permaculture, but I did share his feeling that we were being driven out of some of our favourite ways of enjoying the festival. 

It wouldn't be hard to fix,  but sadly more was less this year.

[Nice hymer]

14 hours ago, dizzymoo said:

Absolutely this.  TTT had always been a favourite place to chill, but this year it was unbearable. 

Weighing up this year there were loads of positives: friendly crowd even in crushes, Arcadia, more places to sit, loos generally clean, and some fabulous performances from Aurora, Bob Vylan (unusually, sound for them was actually a bit too quiet!), Coldplay and Justice. 

But the sound issues were an overwhelming negative.  For a festival which is at least in part about trying to be sustainable, why waste so much power making bands too loud to listen to?  Part of the joy in previous years has been wandering about and stopping to sit down to rest and listen to a band you've never heard.  This year there was precious little opportunity for this as sound was generally too loud, harsh, badly mixed, or being obliterated by music blaring out of bars too near the stage - why are they even allowed to have their systems on while artists are performing onstage?  My autistic son loves the festival, but by Saturday this year he was so overwhelmed he was seriously considering getting the train home.  We managed to get through the day chilling in T&C and permaculture, but I did share his feeling that we were being driven out of some of our favourite ways of enjoying the festival. 

It wouldn't be hard to fix,  but sadly more was less this year.

I thought Pyramid sounded disappointing this year, there seemed to be an echo, like the arrays were slightly out of kilter.

We were at the Other Stage when Nothing But Thieves were playing. The sound was at ear bleed levels and not in a good way. We made a quick exit as it was uncomfortable to be there.

We didn't spend too much time at The Levels, sound bleed between stages was pretty apparent.

Worst of all is the continuing Stonebridge Bar / Park Stage clash.

Stonebridge needs to be moved, the experience for anyone stood rhs of The Park Stage is not good.

We were stood there for Lankum and it really detracted from the experience. We moved front and centre for The Breeders, which was better but occasionally Stonebridge was still intrusive.

Stand outs for us were The Temple and The Glade, delivering volume and quality. We even thought Arcadia was good, although it's still essential to get 'within the sound field'.