Excitement is building for this year's Glastonbury Festival which gets under way today after two barren years due to Covid. Hundreds of thousands are set to descend on Worthy Farm for the first time since 2019 to see the likes of Sir Paul McCartney, Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar perform.
Gates opened to the iconic festival site at 8am and people have been queueing overnight to get in as early as possible. Many have slept in their cars just to make sure they can be among the first to go through the gates.
The obvious prize position to be in is the front of the queue and this morning (June 22), the punters who made it there have revealed the lengths they had to go to in order to be there. Some have even been waiting there since 8am yesterday just be the first in.
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BBC Breakfast reporter Colin Paterson took his microphone down to the front of the queue at around 6.50am and spoke to the people there. Thousands of festival-goers were already lined up outside Worthy Farm with Colin explaining that those at the very front had been there since 8am on Tuesday, meaning they will have been queueing for 24 hours by the time the gates open.
He spoke to a woman called Nicola who is one of the lucky people at the front of the queue. She told Colin that she joined the queue at 10am yesterday.
When asked why she had ventured over to Glastonbury so early, Nicola responded: "Well the train strike and just being excited after three years of not being here. It's good to be back."
Colin remarked that she was looking "fresh" for someone who has been on the same spot for nearly 24 hours, to which Nicola jokingly replied she did not quite feel like that was the case. Asked how much sleep she has had, Nicola, who has not brought a seat with her, said: "Maybe an hour here or there."
Mark Lawrie, 49, from Reading, who now works for a sports charity, said he had arrived at the festival at 2am with his 18-year-old daughter Bethan. "We slept in the car for a few hours and joined the queue at 6am," he told the PA news agency. "This is our third time and it's always brilliant... the moment you get here and start to see the tops of the tents you get such a buzz. It's always such a positive atmosphere here, everyone's just so nice to each other and friendly to each other, but I think after what we've been through the last two and a half years it's going to be special."
Miss Lawrie said the act she is most looking forward to is Billie Eilish, while her father said he is hotly anticipating Sir Paul McCartney.
"When I was first a primary school teacher, I didn't realise this but I lived next door to (McCartney) in East Sussex," he said. "One morning he was walking his dog outside and I had a hangover so I was in bed and didn't go to say hello to him.
"My parents will absolutely never forgive me for not having done that, so he'll be amazing to see."
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