cowowl

Yes, exactly that. The VIP viewing area is only for The East Stage, and the VIP Garden is behind the East Stage. The East Stage is the main stage that The Strokes will be playing on. There are no special VIP areas for any of the other stages, including The West Stage that YYYs are playing on. The walk across will be easy. It won't be like trying to move between stages at Glastonbury. But you would want to get there a fair bit before YYYs come on if you want to guarantee being down the front.

Pretty pleased with that line-up. I have seen all the headliners before but they will all be reliably good, and loads to investigate further down the bill. Something I did notice on the web site while having a look at the line-up is that the FAQ is saying that you can't upgrade to a Settler's Pass this year as the Settler's capacity is full. That is a shame, I was hoping to do that if the weather was set fair for the start of the week.

Here is the original Tweet about Settlers Upgrades. Hope they stick to this and that the early sell out doesn't change things.

They posted on Twitter a few days ago that Settlers Upgrades will be available at the gate. I have a standard ticket but I am waiting until nearer the time (and the weather forecast) to decide whether to do Settlers. We are lucky to have friends with a house half an hour away so we will go down to Wales for the week whatever.

Just managed to get 1 x Early Bird and 1 x Standard. I was finding that I could only add one Early Bird to my basket so gave it a go with one of each which was a compromise and a bit of a saving. Might have been last Early Bird left but might be worth a go for anyone else still trying.

They have said they are going to see how sales go for the first couple of weeks and will announce a payment plan after that if they still decide to offer one.

Finally got in at 10:28. Early birds now sold out (Weekend and Settlers). Will probably still buy standard price tickets but will leave it until later in the year.

I am stuck in the queue as well. Been waiting since 09:45 and still not in. Seems a strange system when some people have got in immediately but I guess they are balloting the queue in some way and not just doing first come, first served.

My wife has just been pinged with 1 day left of recommended self-isolation. That would coincide with the Friday of the festival. I had an old phone with me so I didn't have the app on it, but I assume I would have been pinged as well if I had. We were up front against the barriers for Damon Albarn which is where we guess the 15 mins of close proximity is most likely to come from. Given that was outdoors, we are both double jabbed, and we have both had clear LFTs all week we are assuming we are fine.

We had a great time. They did a superb job of making it feel as normal as possible. We stayed out of the tents for most of the weekend, the only exception was for the BC,NR secret set on the last evening. Music line-up was excellent for me, Little Simz and Anna Meredith my favourites. We stayed in the relocated Quiet Camping and it was very sparsely populated at the far end. Well worth the extra 5-10 mins walk. Toilet situation was not too bad all things considered. Carrying your own toilet roll and hand gel made a big difference. I am an early riser so was able to go straight into the showers at 6am each morning with no queue at all. I quite like the new showers once I worked out the logistics of keeping my clothes and shoes dry. They discourage people from taking too long so I reckon the queue would move more quickly. Food was great as well. Like some others have mentioned, it massively helps that I am pretty flexible and like most of the food options, so just went to the shortest queue. Love the Literature Tent, and the fact that it doesn't overlap with the music much. The talk by Philip Hoare about his book on Albrecht Durer was the highlight. Very disappointed it looks like we can't go next year due to the timings clashing with the first couple of days of the school term (my partner is a part-time teacher and they will likely be training days so can't flex the days around them). Might do Green Man instead and back to EOTR for 2023.

If you went all the way to the far end of the new Quiet Camping area behind the Family Area there was set of loos right in the far corner by the hedge/gate. We camped up there, had loads of space, and never once had to queue for the toilets. Felt a bit guilty when I saw the queues elsewhere around the campsites at busy times.

Very much looking forward to it. Plenty for me to see and the fact the line-up is not quite as stacked as a normal year is leaving more space to visit the Talking Heads stage or just wander around. Particularly can't wait to see Little Simz, that Tiny Desk concert she released yesterday is amazing. Also a self-imposed 'no tents' rule will mean some early nights, although a stellar secret set announcement might tempt me.

Similarly, having gone to my first gig since the pandemic started (Caribou outdoors at Dreamland in Margate) most people were just acting pretty much like a normal outdoor gig, rushing to the front and dancing around packed together. Nothing wrong with that, really, the outdoor transmission risk is so relatively low. Hardly anyone bothered putting masks on to go into the toilets. I stood at the back. It was a fairly small capacity and not sold out so plenty of space around me. I have decided to avoid the Tipi and the Big Top altogether this year. There are plenty of bands I can see on the Garden/Woods/Talking Heads stages for me to get a great festival out of the weekend so I have just made that personal choice for my own peace of mind rather than having to make case by case decisions.

One of us is working on Thursday so won't arrive until 7:30pm on Thursday. Hoping that is enough time to get through the wristband exchange and suss out the camping areas before Stereolab. Like some others we were in Quiet Camping in 2019 and now it has all moved around there may be a bit of wandering to find a good spot.