Claire and I have been going to Glastonbury for a couple of years now, but I’ve always secretly harboured a desire to go to at least two festivals per summer - and this year we’ve finally managed to fulfil that dream!
The second festival this year was Reading, a three-day event situated a mere 25minute train ride away from London Paddington station (home of Paddington bear, of course).
I was lucky enough to get some guest/VIP tickets through work, which meant we had access to a backstage bar (good, cos there were seats - standing for three days straight can be tiresome), guest camping area with hot showers (there was a queue, but you can’t have everything) and proper flush loos that were cleaned daily - hooray!
Reading was quite different to Glastonbury, there’s less arts and crafts, not as many nice food places, loads more drunk 14 year olds, it’s set in a town instead of rolling green hills, there’s about a third less people etc.
Another key difference between the two festies is that all the stages are much closer together, which had its advantages, such as you can skip from the main stage to the second stage in about 5 minutes as apposed to about an hour at Glastonbury, making it much easier to see more bands. It also had its disadvantages, mainly that the sound bleeds between the stages so you can quite often hear the second stage from the main stage - basically the sound at Glastonbury is much better.
The last difference is that the camping is outside of the main arena, and they don’t let you in till about midday and kick you out at about midnight - luckily reading town center is about 15min walk away, this means there is a mass exodus to Reading every morning (and I imagine each night?) to stock up on supplies at the supermarket, buy cheap food at the cafes (everything was ridiculously priced in the arena) etc before heading back to the arena about lunchtime.
Saw some great bands over the course of the weekend, including: The Arcade Fire, Queens of the Stone Age, The Coral, The Pixies, Clor, 9 Black Alps, Maximo Park (they just walked past my desk as I typed this), Foo Fighters (who I’m not a massive fan of, but did put on a good live show) and probably a bunch more that I can’t remember.
The festival has a lot more metal bands that Glastonbury - so got the opportunity to see some great comedy bands (I don’t think they’re intentionally trying to be funny, but they are) such as Turbengro, sort of a cross between Black Sabbath and the Village People - look them up, they’re hilarious .
Iron Maiden headlined the final night, but Claire and I decided that it would be best to escape early to avoid the queues for the trains on Monday, a decision we may come to regret - but I notice that Iron Maiden released a live DVD called death on the road or something equally as silly, so I could always just buy that and pretend we were there.
Anyhoo, Claire and I had a belter of a weekend - it was a bit dreary and overcast on the Friday, but it fined up in the evening and then basically the rest of the weekend was beautiful and sunny, we didn’t end up taking many pictures - but here are the ones that we did:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drivebytourism/sets/848916/
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Glastonbury 2005
Oh man, it's been ages since an update again - anyhoo, here's our pictures from Glastonbury which was held in late June this year.
As you might have heard, we had torential rain with the entire expected rainfall for the month coming down in the early hours of the friday morning - threatening the start of the festival and leaving the site looking more like a dirty swimming pool than a farm.
Despite the water and mud everywhere, we still managed to have a great time. Claire and I were joined by claire's sister Laura and her fiance (now husband) steve, and our friends Josie and Becca.
Highlights of the weekend were the killers, coldplay (who I usually hate, but must admit did quite well headlining the saturday night), the futureheads and brian wilson pulling out some beach boys favourites in one of the few sunny moments during the festival.
Anyway, here's our pictures from the event, enjoy:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drivebytourism/sets/534667/
As you might have heard, we had torential rain with the entire expected rainfall for the month coming down in the early hours of the friday morning - threatening the start of the festival and leaving the site looking more like a dirty swimming pool than a farm.
Despite the water and mud everywhere, we still managed to have a great time. Claire and I were joined by claire's sister Laura and her fiance (now husband) steve, and our friends Josie and Becca.
Highlights of the weekend were the killers, coldplay (who I usually hate, but must admit did quite well headlining the saturday night), the futureheads and brian wilson pulling out some beach boys favourites in one of the few sunny moments during the festival.
Anyway, here's our pictures from the event, enjoy:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drivebytourism/sets/534667/
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