Lynne Telfer was just 17 when she attended the first ever Pilton Pop, Blues and Folk Festival in September 1970. “There was only one stage and it felt a bit ramshackle,” the retiree from Bristol recalls. “Most people just slept where they sat but if you were really organised you had a bit of polythene to put over the top of you in case it rained.” Tickets were £1, and you got a free pint of milk as you walked through the door.
It’s fair to say things have changed at Glastonbury Festival, and not just the name. This week, 210,000 people will be making their way to Somerset, to a 1,100-acre site bigger than Monaco and the Vatican City combined. Tickets this year cost £340, but that’s a drop in a muddy field for some festival-goers, who will be staying at one of a rising number of über-luxurious accommodation options and chartering a helicopter to take them to and from the site. It’s Worthy Farm, but not as most of us know it.
