how do Glastonbury locals cope?

[Stroopwaffels]

With 200k people descending on a very rural location? The traffic is bad enough in Glasgow when there's a single big concert on, Ed Sheeran played last week and the 60k people attending caused gridlock all over the place. And that's in a major city with motorways.

How do people go to work, get their kids to school, pop to Tesco?

I don't know if it would bother me but if it did I'd just book annual leave and fuck off to a hotel somewhere

It adds massively to our local economy, it's part of Glastonbury living, we like it!

I used to live near Notting Hill carnival. After the first couple of years I learned to go out of the area for two days.

I live round there. Its great fun, all the revellers, all the vehicles. My friends are all working onsite so the pub we go to in Glastonbury has been different without them...but full of refugees. One man last night off his nut!

Isn’t it though? We went in February and it was like stepping back to 1970s. But, fair play, almost all independent purveyors of woo and tie dyed harem pants.

That's largely not due to the festival - it's a spiritual place for other reasons. Plus the festival is not actually in Glastonbury town, and most of the festival goers won't go anywhere near.

I'm a local. It's a bit annoying, but traffic not much worse than Bath and West festival days. And the free tickets more than compensate 😁

We live very near a popular ' quaint fishing village' in Cornwall which has become very popular in the last 10 years or so. No where near the intense numbers of Glastonbury but there are coping mechanisms!

We go away for 3 weeks in the summer when tourists numbers peak.
I do on line shopping to avoid using the car and traffic.
We tend to have a late start in the morning and then arrange to meet friends and family late afternoon until late which is when the beach is quietest.
The pace of life is slower anyway, so you just have to go with it!

I used to live not too far from Glastonbury, and I used to absolute love going to the town for the day. I'd make any excuse go there and drag anyone who'd come with me 🤣

In another life, I'd definitely like to live there. But I've always wondered about how the festival impacts the town.

It certainly wouldn't be enough to put me off though, it's a lovely place!

By letting out their homes for £3000 a night!

You sound lovely @AllHailKingLouis

I live at the other end of the country and was not aware that the Glastonbury Festival was not in Glastonbury and was actually closer to Shepton Mallet. I suppose Shepton Mallet doesn't have that ring to it.

I am assuming the locals can't take the offer of free tickets and then sell them on to compensate for the inconvenience?

I live in Glastonbury town. Tbh the Wednesday the festival opens traffic is heavy. It can also be heavy on the Friday, and of course the Monday after.

But generally it's fine during the event. I was driving around happily yesterday including popping to Aldi. I noticed a few festival folk wandering on the High St yesterday.

NB the town is a bit of a ghost town during the event as many of the locals are involved in the festival.

I will probably be out as usual over the weekend as planning to go to the local carboot or maybe a nature hike.

In the last few years a festival has starts near me. I LOATHE it. It was imposed on us locals with no choice. It goes on for 5 days until 4am. It’s impossible to sleep. Ear plugs do nothing - you can feel the bass in your chest. It gives me a terrible splitting headache - the bass reverberates inside my skull. There is no respite. I can’t go outside in my garden because the noise incenses me.
I have 4 children who cry and cry because they can’t sleep until 4am. I am a TA (ie low paid) and I can’t afford to go away. No family can accommodate the 5 of us.
People say “Oh it’s only 5 days, people are having a good time, put up and shut up” bit why should I? If I pitched up outside these people’s houses and blasted Rick Astley constantly at them for 5 days, barricaded them in their houses stopping them getting out they wouldn’t like it.
It’s just a selfish money making scheme.

The festival is actually several miles away from the town of Glastonbury itself

Funnily enough I asked some of the local folk in Glasto town the last time we visited (love a good crystal shop!) and they commented on how quiet the town itself is during the festival 🤷🏻‍♀️

I dunno why you'd move there if you didn't like it, but people are strange and daft. I'd just stock up on food before it started and settle down for the time. Would be cool if you could hear the music from your garden.

Or do what others suggested and rent out my house for someone to book and go away for the festival.

A town near me is a major golfing destination. When the big tournaments are on the locals rent out their properties for 4 figure sums and the restaurants and bars do extremely well.

We live near to locations of major events or tourist hot spots. With the tourist hot spot the locals just say at home weekends and Bank Holidays. With the events site the locals just have to pre prepare not to need to go out and about and cross their fingers they don't need to go anywhere in an emergency. No one is usually able to go away for a weekend and they certainly wouldn't take in house guests as they are mostly farmers, small holders and villagers, its more a case of battoning down the hatches.

It doesn’t affect really.

forat and last day of the festival the roads are busy but it is at Pilton so quite remote. The route from castle Cary to the site gets busy. But it is all really well managed.

We can see the haze of the lights from our fields and hear the music if the wind is right.

DH has been going every year for almost 30 years and we love it. It has changed hugely though, I would say for the better.

The green fields and the stone circle is where the authentic hippies live/play for the weekend. Everyone else is just an ordinary pleb with about £1k to spare for the ticket/food/drink/travel for the weekend.

I don’t live in Glastonbury but I do live close to the site of another major festival and what we do is go away for that weekend! Completely intolerable to stay

When I was at the Glastonbury festival I met a family who lived in Pilton. Their little girl also happened to have a birthday that weekend so they had told her they were throwing her a huge party and given her a massive birthday badge saying ‘I am 6’. Everyone walking past was saying happy birthday to her and she genuinely thought it was all for her. It really made me smile.

The reason it’s intolerable is the noise, I should say, rather than the busyness or traffic. I don’t even mind the music itself so much but the bass somehow seems to vibrate the whole neighbourhood and it makes us feel sick.

@BadAtMaths2

Like the other PP, I'm guessing you live on the Isle of Man.
Can I just ask a morbid question? Do all the TT deaths affect the atmosphere for you islanders or has it got to the point that everyone sees it as one of the risks of the racing & whilst every death is obviously sad, it's part & parcel of the event?

I love bike racing & I've always wanted to go but I find the death count upsetting.

This has made my day, how sweet!

I can tell you from when the festivals are on near us it really isn’t cool. The bass, the pounding is intolerable. The whole house shakes.

These festivals near us are just so selfish with no one thinking of the villagers or the misery it inflicts on the locals.

Every weekend.

I used to live very near the Arsenal stadium in Highbury. The first time I used the little tube station I was a bit puzzled by a completely wired off cage like section at the side of the tunnel going down to the platforms. Then I naively wanted to go somewhere on a home match day. The tunnel was so that non footie fans could get in or out of the station, in those days football fans were even worse behaved than they are now, the verbal abuse, threatening gestures and spitting , not to mention the streams of urine, meant local people timed their journeys very carefully.