Getting up at 4am sucks

Anyone who knows me well will tell you I'm not a morning person. It is hard enough to get in to the office by 9am most mornings.

So when I tell you that I got up this week not once but twice at 4am you will understand that that is quite a struggle for me.

Last week I needed to go to a meeting in Stockholm for work but didn't have time to stay there the night before and needed to be back that night for a work function (at the top of Tower Bridge - can't be missed!)

So I got up at 4am to get the 6:30am flight from Gatwick to Stockholm, just in time for my 11am meeting. Then time for a quick beer (150 SEK for 2 beers! That's about GBP 15!) before hitting the 4:50pm flight back to London City airport in good time to get back to the party on top of London's most famous land mark (well maybe second after the Elizabeth Tower  of the Palace of Westminster best known as the Big Ben).

The second time was leaving Glastonbury yesterday morning, in order to avoid the crowds leaving the festival. It is strange getting up at 4am at a music festival, a time where a good proportion of people have not gone to bed yet.

The up-side, of living in the UK, however, is that 4am is about the time it gets light at this time of the year, and by 5am the sun is truly up.

Glastonbury Festival

I've been a bit poor at updating this travel blog lately, and normally I write about international travel, not things like trips to music festivals. But for Glastonbury I'm going to make an exception.

I've been to a lot of music festivals in my time, both in Europe and in Australia. From going every year to small festivals like Meredith Music Festival (a couple of hours from Melbourne) to bigger European festivals like Sziget in Hungary and Isle of Wight (circa 65,000 people). But nothing I have ever experienced even comes close to Glastonbury.

Glastonbury, where I went for 4 days around this weekend, is a whole city set up in the west country of England catering for the 135,000 ticket-holders  plus many more thousands of staff and performers over 100 stages. It took me about an hour to walk from one side of the festival site to the other, and another 45 minutes to the car park. What a huge set up.

I was fearful of images I remember seeing in newspapers in previous years of revellers wading through knee-deep mud and just about needing boats to haul their camping gear across the site. I encountered a night of rain upon arrival but was lucky to get scorching sun* throughout the long weekend. Which was great for sitting in the sun with cider, watching band after band come and play.

Watching bands play in the sun at Glastonbury

There were hundreds of acts across a handfull of main stages and some 100 other small stages. Watching the Rolling Stones with about 100,000 other people was an interesting experience, but of course some of the more intimate performances might remain more memorable.

Despite the massiveness of it all, the people are friendly and the crowds are mostly tame. The festival organisers did a great job of managing so many people. Nevertheless, a camp out festival still ends with getting home and appreciating the comforts available, like flushing toilets, warm showers, and peace and quiet. Or am I just getting old?

* - Scorching by English standards, that is. Nothing like the 45 degrees I had to endure on New Years Day 2006 at the 2005 Pyramid Rock Festival on Phillip Island with a huge hang over (partly caused by the lack of food available at the festival) and no shade.