Hills, Banksy, Football, Birthday & Absinthe Jelly

Post by: Dave
First year at Camp Triangle:

Wednesday 5 Oct 2016 (8 years ago )

So 2009 was the first year that a group of us did Glastonbury properly, ie we didn't just arrive on the Wednesday for the gates opening.

The Sunday before was Summer Solstice, so a group/gang of us decided to go to Avebury to see the sun come up. We camped at The Barge Inn Honeystreet. As we didn't want to drive over to Avebury (15 miles), Nick organised for a coach to come and pick us up and take us back the next day. Avebury was definitely preferable to going to Stonehenge, firstly it was a lot less people (Stonehenge had 35,000 people) and secondly there was a pub in the middle of the village where we could get food & drinks.

The Hill

The Stone Circle in Avebury is well spread out and encompasses the whole village, to watch the sun come up we found a small hill to sit on. I spent a great deal of time trying to persuade Mongrel that it'd be a great idea for him to roll down the hill. Every time I asked he said no, he's been a constant disappointment to me^(†), I even tempted him with beer. A man sat near us overheard and said that he'd do it for a can of beer.

So off he went to the top of the hill and prepared himself. Now in my head, the rolling down would be lying-down and rolling like a sausage, the reality was that this young man rolled down head over heals. Towards the bottom of the hill there was a bump and this had the affect of a ski-jump. Needless to say the man ended up in a crumpled heap and an ambulance came to take him away.

In the morning our coach came to pick us up, we were all tired after staying up all night. Most of us fell asleep on the coach. After a while it appeared that the coach driver was completely lost and we were heading into Swindon Town Centre. After turning back we eventually got back to The Barge Inn and back to get some sleep.

Banksy

The next day we headed into Bristol to buy supplies and visit the Banksy exhibition and Bristol Art Gallery. Banksy had taken over the whole gallery with an installation called Exit Through the Gift Shop.

After the exhibition we then headed to Glastonbury, via a shop to buy some Absinthe. At Glastonbury, we stayed at a camp site called Old Oaks at the foot of Glastonbury Tor (which Paul would also not roll down). They put us all in completely different fields here to camp, they really don't like us there.

Absinthe Jelly

Whilst at Old Oaks Paul & I made Absinthe Jelly for my birthday party, which we were going to celebrate at the cider bus meet. We left the jelly to set on the parcel shelf of Paul's car.

More frivolities were had and we went into Street to buy Hecks Perry & Cheese. We went to the Rifelmans (a traditional meet up place).

The next day (Wednesday), we drove to the site early in the morning to join the queue, the car parks didn't open on Tuesdays back then.

When we got into the festival we went to the boot of the car and opened it, completely forgetting about the absinthe jelly, which incidentally had melted as it was too hot. The jelly ran all into the boot, I believe that after this Paul just sold the car rather than trying to clean up the mess. We did manage to salvage a little but not enough for the planned Jelly & Ice Cream Birthday Party.

Football

Chas & Hogga had organised, for the Wednesday Afternoon, a charity Football match England (Hogga team captain) vs The rest of the World (Chaz team captain). There was a huge crowd watching, including Jesus, loads of money was raised for WaterAid, Hobo Jones & the Junkyard Dogs perfomed and Phil got his own chant!

Birthday

Later on that evening at the Cider Bus we celebrated my 40th Birthday, without the absinthe jelly. As my friends and fellow Trianglers began to sing Happy Birthday everyone gathered at the Cider Bus joined in, around 5000 people all told.