That's right, we were at the Glastonbury '99 festival. And boy what an event it was. This article will probably end up being a bit choppy but then again, that's what it was like. There will be a few reviews of some the bands in greater detail in the music section but this article is more of a review of the event itself. Go ahead, take a look. Remember, if they aren't already there, there will soon be plenty of photographs from the biggest music festival in Europe in the Gallery section

We set off on the Wednesday even though the official stuff didn’t start until Friday. Our journey was by train from Newport train station which changed at Westbury station for a train to Castle Cary station. During our stop at Westbury we (and a number of other people at the station) saw a small tornado which had formed in the bottom of a far off cloud. Freaky huh! It wasn't touching the ground but was easily visible and a pretty rare thing to see in this neck of the proverbial woods. Especially as there was absolutely no wind or rain and certainly no far-off storms! After an omen like that, the festival had to be something special. And by golly it sure as hell was!

At Castle Cary they ran a regular free bus service for genuine ticket holders to get to the site. This was a very nice thing to do. The bus was hot and packed but it sure beat walking. Unfortunately, when the bus arrived and we headed off towards the main gate, we had to walk for absolutely ages. This while carrying all of our stuff too. A slightly weary pair of Coagulons arrived at the main gate, and handed in their tickets. We were in!

As soon as we entered, large carrier bags were thrust upon us by the natives (er… festival staff, sorry about the Phineas Fogg lapse there!). On checking out these flimsy plastic containers we found a program, newspaper style festival guide and a pocket program on a string. As other festivals charge for this kind of kit it was nice to see handed out at the very beginning.

"That’s way too big to be a…" Han Solo - Alderaan System - 1977

As the site is in a big valley we could see the impressive size of the place. As far as the eyes could see there were cars, tents, people and stages. It stretched quite literally for miles! Already, despite being 8:30 two days before it starts, the party had already begun and the fellow festival-goers had already erected plenty of tents. The tent was erected underneath a very large electricity pylon, which sounded like a good idea for locating it when wrecked at the time. Unfortunately, when darkness fell, the campfires started so it was impossible to see the pylons. We never actually got lost though. Surprisingly, many of the stalls in the market areas were already open and doing a rip-roaring trade. We had a darn good reconnaissance of the area, sampled the local cuisine (fry up consisting mainly of beans, it would be a loud night in the tent!), got pissed, got a campfire going, then went to sleep. End of our day 1!

COAGULUS AT GLASTONBURY - Day 2 - Thursday 24th June 1999

We awoke to see that a damn site more tents had been erected overnight. They were everywhere. Luckily the tent by the side of us had a fence around it and so far, no one had violated that space. We Had a coffee and a drink and went for a walk around.

What surprised us was the amount of activity in the festival itself. Despite still being 24 hours until the festival officially started, practically all of the stalls were open. There was even an, i assume, impromptu concert taking place on the Jazz Stage. The people were all in 'normal' clothing and appeared to be just having a laugh onstage. It was bloody good though so we stayed there for a good while and enjoyed the event.

The sun was out in full force again. I wondered if I would actually see any of the famous Glastonbury festival mud on this outing. All the mud that was there had turned to a sandy dust. It was a bit hard to sit on and got to your lungs pretty quickly. I wasn't complaining though. I dug out my 'air' flares (Jeans with the bottom half cut into thin strips) which were incredibly cooling on the legs and chilled for the rest of the day.

The festival starts properly tomorrow!!