Jump to content

Best & Worst Glastonbury Area


Deadendfriends8
 Share

Recommended Posts

The talk about the Acoustic Stage area in another thread inspired me to make a thread about this and thought it would be interesting to hear all of your opinions on the Best & Worst Glastonbury areas.

Best - West Holts/Brothers Bar - A regular meeting point for our group and hub of most nights out.

Worst - Acoustic Stage area - Uphill baron wasteland of pulled from the depths of hell.

Edited by Deadendfriends8
grammar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best - well it's really hard to choose between West Holts, which is my favourite in the mornings with a pint of Toffee Apple cider for breakfast and a fantastic World Music or Afrobeat band on, and Avalon, which is just amazing all the time but not really a breakfast destination

Worst - yeah Silver Hayes doesn't float my boat, but the worst sound I've heard is up at the Acoustic

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As above

Best = Glade or maybe Crows Nest

Worst - Silver Hayes - for me its soulless, and just a vast walk through to somewhere better - really needs a total redesign as far as I am concerned, especially looking at how good all the other areas are, its such a let down and has been for many years. A mish-mash of stages with no real character/identity at all. Just my opinion though

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best area: Shangri-La. Can't choose a particular area, it's all amazing. Depends on the night, the vibe, the music, how crowded it is.

Area that has room for improvement (there are no worst areas at Glastonbury): Silver Hayes. Let's hope that the changes planned for 2019 bring it up to the same standard as the rest of the festival.

Edited by Supernintendo Chalmers
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best - The Park

Worst - Silver Hayes. Acoustic is bland and meh, but Silver Hayes can be actively bad. It's probably amplified because I camp in Bushy/Pylon and walking through it is such a pain, especially in the mud in 2016. Craig David was awesome in 2016, so it's not all bad, the layout and aesthetic just aren't to my taste.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best: Block 9 - some of the best nights you'll ever have, for sure.

Worst: Controversial but I'm really not keen on Arcadia. I admire the spectacle of it all but I can't help but the music on offer there when I've been rarely floats my boat. Its also a nightmare to find people at!

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fave area is the stretch from Acoustic, down the hill over Arabella’s bridge and into the Cabaret area up to Avalon.    It’s where the best random-ness occurs.   It’s a short walk to West Holts where the best grub is too (Leon’s and Goan Fish Curry). 

 

Least favourite is the Other Stage if it’s muddy. 

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best: Avalon (There’s a surprise), but WH up there too, and Small World and Bimble Inn for small stages

Worst: Not for the music, but I’ve always found the Other Stage a bland area that could be any big festival, limited character, and due to its flat, bottom of the valley location, often very muddy. At least Silver Hayes has the Blues & Gulley which I like. 

 

  • Like 1
  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best pyramid 

worst other stage

 

west holts and glade more consistently good but the best moments on pyramid can’t be beat.

other stage gets worst award because I feel it could be at any other festival, nothing special about it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best: Park - great line up, great surrounding venues (bimble inn, rabbit hole, crows nest), good food spots and a nice feel about the place. Avalon and West Holts are also great.

Worst: Other stage - there's always a couple of bands on which I'll go to - always seems a bit of a chore to get there and find a decent spot. Surrounded by mostly pretty average food places. The line up will always have some great stuff on it, but there's also plenty of middle of the road rubbish too. Often the crowds are not particularly interested in the bands, which can ruin it for bands you do like

(like many others I'm not a fan of Silver hayes, but I've not really set foot in it for the last couple of years so it's not really part of my festival)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best - Park stage  - everything about it

Worst - all the south east corner - controversy time....
I find the whole thing way too overcrowded and more like a poor uni project with childish messaging. Needs to be way cleverer than it is. Maybe I've seen it too many times.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Worst - As a lot of other people have said, Silver Hayes can be grim - especially if you're walking through at the end of the night when it's half-empty and full of empty gas canisters. It also makes John Peel worse by sheer proximity. I'd also give a vote for every SE corner venue that I've never been able to get into because of overcrowding.

Best - Love the Park and all the small venues in that area. Also really enjoy Avalon - getting breakfast in the cafe there on a Friday morning before seeing Hobo Jones has become a mini-tradition

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best - Tie between Park & Avalon. 

Honorary mention - for the Pyramid field 15-20 years ago. I used to love the vibe in the evenings with all the fires & flares dotted around the hillside - unfortunately now these are gone it’s lost a bit of it’s identity

Least best (nothings that bad!) - unfortunately agreeing with a lot on here, Silver Hayes. Been saying it needs some new ideas for a few years now - just too spacious - carve it up a bit and introduce some smaller sub-areas with specific character (surely there is some precedent nearby to draw ideas from....oh hello SE corner!) would do it wonders 

Edited by mario man
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Worst - Silver Hayes - it feels like the least Glastonbury like in both the clientele and the vibe around the stages. You can normally walk from one side to the other on laughing gas canisters without touching the ground

Best - The Park if you're standing in the right place and get the right artist is pretty magical; James Blake there back a few years was incredible!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe it's just me, but for me:

BEST: Green Futures field. Just love the vibe, and seems like the soul of the whole festival. (Honourable mention to The Park.)

WORST: Silver Hayes. It's just not much of anything really. 2017 was the first year I didn't go there to even have a look around.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best: DAY - The Park Stage area, grab some mezze food, have a little wander about, pop into the Stonebridge Bar, walk up the Glasto hill etc. NIGHT - Bloc 9 (NYC Downlow is simply one of the best clubs in the world!)

Worst: Have to agree with everyone, Silver Hayes. Just doesn't seem very well though out and could easily be a normal festival. The only highlight of this area for me is the outdoor HMS Wow stage, which can be fun in the afternoons depending on the DJ & crowd

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting to see so much dislike for Silver Hayes. As I camp right next door to it I've always had a soft spot as its has often provided a lot of first night entertainment for my friends and I. I think it does suffer from a clear lack of identity with a lot of themes mashed together. However, some of the individual venues have provided great entertainment. Pussy Parlure is always good fun!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



  • Latest Activity

    • my wife and I put two Oxfam volunteering spots in the pot today as we managed to secure tickets in the resale on Sunday, fingers crossed they show up for you soon!
    • We’re after 1 Oxfam spot for my wife, having secured one myself back in Feb.   We’ve been weighing up whether to stick or twist with the cutoff coming up.    Your words sound encouraging though so we might have to stick it out and hammer the Oxfam site for that 1 spot! 
    • This gives us hope! We're lucky enough to work on our laptops all day so this is all possible!
    • So long as you requested your bus via the transport survey before April 15th, you're all good - there haven't been any confirmation emails yet 
    • Did some digging online. Well, you did ask.   There isn't much there that's very recent. An application for planning permission for "use of land for siting of up to 16 low impact residential shelters within a woodland garden setting and associated operational development comprising car park, telephone box, and children's play structure" was rejected in 1999 - though apparently there was a "legal breakthrough" in 2001. This is from 1995:   Clearly it's still in use. A resident called Theo Simon stood for election to the local council (for the Green Party) in 2017. His band, Seize the Day, seems to play Glastonbury every year (at Toad Hall, Small World, sometimes other sets elsewhere). This is a video of their 2019 set:     There's an interview with him, probably filmed at Kings Hill, here. He sounds pretty cool if you ask me.   https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/why-religion-matters/0/steps/73899   This is from a university thesis submitted in 1999:   The King’s Hill Collective The King’s Hill Collective can be seen as solution to increasing pressures of living on the road for Travellers who were bringing up children and as a solution to (and rejection of) mainstream consumerist society by non Travellers many of whom were originally city dwellers. Nevertheless because many of the members had direct travelling experience, this community provided an example of one extreme in a continuum between those Travellers for whom the tag ‘New Age’ is a complete irrelevance and those for whom it is at least understandable if not desirable. This group is on the ‘New Age’, ecologically aware, ideologically ‘hippie’ and ‘sorted’ end of the New Age Traveller continuum discussed in the previous chapter. The site, which overlooks Pilton farm (the site of the Glastonbury Festival), is slowly maturing now with numerous trees, vegetables and a fully functioning water bore hole which supplies the site with drinking water. Water is extracted on a weekly basis using an old petrol engine and pump. The water, which is filtered by a series of sand traps, is inspected on an annual basis. The collective is concerned to demonstrate its willingness to 243adhere to regulations were this is possible and not contrary to its collective ideology. There are 16 plots, each at some stage of the development of the site, having a bender.   The benders are almost exclusively constructed of light green Tarpaulin over a hazel wood matrix. Stainless steel flexi-vents lead from stoves in the benders. These act as chimneys supported by a single branch driven into the earth. The stoves are usually home-made conversions of gas cylinders which have been cut and welded into shape although there was an solid fuel Rayburn installed in one bender during the study period. Inside the benders bedding is arranged on wooden pallets or platforms and there is often an additional gas stove for cooking. Water is supplied either directly from the holding tank or stored in water barrels. Lighting is almost exclusively by candles or ‘hurricane lamps’. Twelve volt batteries and in one case a wind generator supplies electricity for radios and in one case a small black and white television. Some of the more established benders had a variety of trees and shrubs around the canvass construction including apple, pear and fig trees as well as a variety of fruits.   The collective is serviced by a pay telephone located in an old red telephone box. Its position, in the middle of a field, is as incongruous as the lamp post in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books and is in a way reminiscent of the TARDIS of Doctor Who, adding to the slightly surreal or magical atmosphere of the place. Inside a small domestic pay phone is installed and managed by one of the community.   At the centre of the site is a clearing of grass that acts as a communal area surrounded by a small circular mound inside of which runs a circular ditch in the fashion of a place of worship. In the centre of the circle is a small collection of sea stones collected from a nearby shoreline. There are four gaps in the mound representing the solstices and equinoxes, which correspond to the cardinal points of the compass. Each section of the mound was constructed during the period of the year that it represents. There are symbols representing Beltane and other significant calendar dates placed appropriately on the circle. The King’s Hill site owes its existence to Chris Black, a man who was broadly sympathetic to alternative lifestyles and provided initial financial support to the project. Chris Black purchased the field and ‘loaned’ sixteen plots to a number of Travellers and bender dwellers. The newly formed community developed a ‘constitution’ and organised a system whereby the loan of the plots was paid back over a period of two years through weekly contributions to a central fund. Thus after two years the land belonged to sixteen stakeholders.
  • Featured Products

  • Hot Topics

  • Latest Tourdates

×
×
  • Create New...