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How I Survived Glastonbury 2022: A To start with-Timer’s Guide

How I Survived Glastonbury 2022: A To start with-Timer’s Guide

Lessons from the pageant, where Kendrick Lamar brought ‘Mr. Morale’ to the stage, Moist Leg drew a McCartney-sized crowd, and peace and clarity reigned higher than the madness

How I Survived Glastonbury 2022: A First-Timer's Guide

Image: Stephen Carlick

Published Jul 04, 2022

If you might be from England, you can in all probability stop reading through listed here. You’ve got been to Glastonbury just before it can be in your blood. You already know what it is to set up new IPs with personal computer-savvy pals just to make guaranteed you get tickets for some North American to “seem a twat” (your words and phrases not mine!) mainly because they imagined they’d look cooler wearing trainers (ahem, sneakers) in the muddy fields of Somerset than genuine boots to clap alongside to just about each and every music you adore (even if it is on the kinds and threes).

This guide is for individuals with only a vague perception of the legendary fest for whom the fabled festival of mud and new music has usually lingered an ocean away for whom an endless wait around for a shit with no toilet paper and 5 extensive days without having a vegetable — or, presented it was 2022, bringing COVID property with you — is a tiny value to pay back to see modern musical icons make history.

Getting moved to London in late 2019, just just before the pandemic started, I experienced to see whether or not Glastonbury actually was the finest tunes competition in the globe. 

What I located was, in point, something like magic. But there were some points I couldn’t have survived it without having. 

1. Provide a tent, and really don’t conclusion up future to the poo

Not to be clear, but be absolutely sure to carry a tent, sleeping bag and yoga mat. You may see this a person on the formal Glasto internet site for the reason that it is really vital. (Fast facet be aware: I have listened to from people that declaring “Glasto” is lame, but then I also read people same men and women say “Glasto” a number of occasions so I say do what you like in his headlining established this calendar year, none other than Sir Paul McCartney referred to festivalgoers as “Glastonbergers” so, you know, language is a living factor.) It can be a fucking hike to East Somerset, whether you do it by prepare or mentor bus (I endorse mentor, as it is really extra roomy and the views are nicer) and hauling a bunch of things with you is irritating — but you are investing in your foreseeable future, which, if you do it appropriate, is five nights of sleeping in relative comfort and ease after spending each working day walking 15 km in the summer warmth. (Of course, five: do not display up on Thursday or afterwards or you will get a poo-adjacent campsite spot, and that is even worse than carrying 900 sleeping baggage!)

Pack effectively, but for the lengthy haul. In the phrases of my intelligent Glastonberger pal: “Glastonbury is a marathon, not a dash.” (Also: don’t do all your medicines on Thursday night.) Pack for ease and comfort, but you should not trouble bringing a pillow these matters are humongous, and soft clothing bunched up will do the identical detail.


2. Carry “bathroom roll” and stay away from eye get in touch with whilst peeing

Suitable, so bear in mind the point I stated about 900 sleeping bags? Make it a amazing 5,000. You have in no way smelled something like the Glastonbury “prolonged fall” toilets like a fighter jet hurtles into eyesight overhead only soon after, like, 12 complete seconds of higher-pitched screaming, these things are 10 miles up your nasal passage and ensconced in your brain tissue prior to you’ve noticed the large Bathrooms signal. (By this place, if you have not figured out “lengthy drop,” you are on your personal.)

Which is to say nothing at all of their development: square stalls in 10×2 formation devoid of tops and dealing with every other, so if you are standing up to piss, and anyone else is standing up to piss, you are almost certainly building eye speak to. To incorporate to the complete mess, persons miss, and not just with urine – deliver wet wipes, and will not dawdle individuals have to go, and you don’t want to pass up the opening songs of Diana Ross’s “Legends” slot!

Essential notice: there is certainly no toilet paper in these factors, so often have a roll on your individual. It is really just excellent perception!

3. “Wellies”

Like any self-respecting North American, I have not worn rain boots — or, sigh, “Wellies” — because I was five, and I remember currently being humiliated by them even then. But Glastonbury is famed for its mud, and if you get a downpour on just 1 of your pageant times with no them, you might be heading to be the just one slowing down your group as you tiptoe close to the new marshland. Buy a pair of Wellington boots — in some cases just bringing them is sufficient to ward the rain off anyway. For day-to-working day walking, have on climbing boots or other thick-soled footwear the floor can be uneven, and you want to be well prepared for extended times.

4. A mobile phone battery pack will conserve your weekend

Truthfully, deliver two of these, and make them weighty duty. When you are at HAIM on Saturday at 6 p.m. and your friend is catching component of Major Thief, but you both equally would actually like to see Olivia Rodrigo do “drivers license” at the Other Phase in golden hour mild, your only hope of meeting up depends on your phone’s battery. (This will turn out to be a subject of some urgency when, about five songs in, Rodrigo addresses “Challenging” by Avril Lavigne and you want to scream-sing it with your friends.) 

I guarantee you will never, ever find your mate in the endless expanse of even one particular of Glastonbury’s phases without having your phone, and the strains to cost up will take in up a literal 3rd of your pageant working day, so make investments! Your cell phone is your second-most critical instrument (see: “bathroom paper,” over), so maintain it juiced: it is your map, your walkie-talkie, and it is really only gonna get much more crucial as the sunlight goes down and your blood alcohol level goes up. 


5. Opt for your mates sensibly

Can your good friends dangle at Glastonbury? Do they know how to step through a group with no being an asshole? (Don’t trod on people’s blankets!) Do they know their alcoholic beverages and medicines restrict? (A two-litre whiskey and soda will continue to keep you hydrated and tipsy!) Are they great at building a program for wherever to satisfy up if you get divided? And will they, as I witnessed just one group of absolute lads carrying out, keep you “Upside Down” through Diana Ross’s famed song even though one more pal funnels a essential into your nostril? (I promise you this transpired!)

Additional importantly, will they flip to you for the duration of Phoebe Bridgers, when you have been crying for, like, three music so considerably, and nonetheless sing alongside? Will they drunkenly sing the na na na naaahhhhs of “Hey Jude” as loudly as achievable with you? Will they introduce you to new pals, in a group chat basically termed “Horse,” just to assistance you feel like section of a group at the festival?

Convey these pals. They will make your Glastonbury additional unique than even double-quilted rest room paper at any time could.

6. Provide a lightweight water bottle, and share with all those who did not

Buddy, you are gonna be in the sunshine all day, and Glastonbury quite eco-neatly does not sell water bottles. (Or branded anything at all: all of the foodstuff on web-site is supplied by area sellers, and it truly is all fucking delicious.) But yeah, convey your refillable bottle, and share water with people who have been in the entrance little bit of the Pyramid Phase group all day. This is what Glastonbury is all about. The people today below will shock you with their kindness England is pent up for 360 times a year so that they can have all of their Superior Time at Glastonbury. (They may perhaps offer you you a pill as nicely!)

7. Sit down, be humble

Pack some humility in there, pal — I know you have home. The very best portion about Glastonbury is that you can find a thing for absolutely everyone: dim tents blasting techno for the all-working day ravers “Therapeutic Fields” for the hippie in you who desires a head or foot therapeutic massage, or just a position to lie down (you haven’t lived right until you’ve let some amazing particular person named Karine massage out your hangover) an arts and crafts field the place, if you want, you can invest a few several hours weaving a wicker basket (imagine bringing that house for mom?!) a talent phase wherever you grow to be the star. 

Level is, there is certainly place at Glastonbury for all styles. Men and women will gown in all sorts of methods, and your judgement is very best still left at home. Early on in the fest, I built a snarky quip about a newborn boomer’s hat, only to be roundly shut down by my British mates: “This is their territory!” The following morning, the highlight of the Libertines’ set was when a shirtless 60-one thing sailed throughout the best of the crowd and onto the Jumbotron. Allow people today don whatsoever hat they like! Even if it has a feather! Do not be a dick.


8. You are only human and can not do all the things

It is in your desire to acknowledge, early on, that you have a finite amount to time to see new music, and that you will have to have to make concessions. Will not be upset: you will be equipped to see Mitski a further time (and there was never ever a prayer of creating it to the Park Phase in the southwest corner for her 9:15–10:15 p.m. slot and back again once again in time to come across my friends at Paul McCartney’s Pyramid Phase headline set).

The golden rule at Glastonbury is that you have to have to depart an hour for mainly anything food stuff, toilets, another person else getting hungry, bathrooms all over again, escaping the group after Wet Leg’s impossibly packed (and impossibly fun) 2 p.m. slot on Friday. Observing 15 minutes of every little thing you want to see will necessarily mean observing it from a mile absent, so settle in for a operate of artists at a one stage.


9. Treasure the moments in-concerning the songs

You might have found this short article has been a little bit light on, perfectly, the tunes at Glastonbury. Rest confident, it really is remarkable: I watched Kendrick Lamar debut Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers for a world wide viewers, dancing throughout the best part of his discography although donning a crown of thorns I viewed Phoebe Bridgers invite Arlo Parks to sing “Graceland Way too,” and McCartney carry Bruce Fucking Springsteen out, as well. I watched flames shoot from a colossal steel spider, danced to Four Tet, and had my brain melted by techno beneath a gigantic hybrid of a cube and human head. The tunes was outstanding.

But I also ate a 3 a.m. burrito so extremely tasty and vital that my friend and I spoke about it in reverent tones for the subsequent two days weaselled my way into the Rabbit Gap, a location that featured lobster-clawed drag performers a person night and at which the HAIM sisters partied yet another and I viewed the solar increase, at 5 a.m., over a metropolis of tents and towers and phases that failed to exist four times prior, with good friends I hadn’t met then, in no way owning felt as at peace. Glastonbury is created of a lot of areas, and nonetheless manages to be much more than the sum of them.

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