Stewarding at Glastonbury 2013

With tickets for Glastonbury 2014 going on sale yesterday, I felt the urge to do a post about the fabulous time I had at Glasto 2013!

Like I did with WoMAD last year, I attended Glastonbury as a volunteer steward with Oxfam. This meant that I did 3x 8 hour shifts in return for my ticket, hot showers (with no queue), clean toilets, a quiet, secure campsite, free phone charging (rarely a queue) and 5 free meals. Oh, and I got to see the Rolling Stones.

For Glastonbury, Oxfam even put on a free bus from Bristol station direct to the steward campsite if you book in advance. Brilliant.

As you might expect, places at Glasto go remarkably quickly, despite the fact that this year Oxfam had 2400 stewards on site. Handily, if you’ve stewarded any festival with Oxfam in the past three years, you get priority applications which providing there’s nothing wrong with your application pretty much guarantees you a place!

2400 stewards sounds like a lot, but for Glastonbury that’s nothing. All the Oxfam stewards were responsible for, from Wednesday until Monday, were the gates. That’s it. Other companies providing other stewards did the rest. That’s how big this place is.

There are downsides to working the festival. Whatever your shift pattern, there’s always going to be something your missing. I had my fingers crossed for days before I got there that I wouldn’t have to work Saturday night and miss the Rolling Stones. I would have cried. I got lucky (and it was amazing).

The other downside is the night shift. It can be intensely boring if you’re on a quiet gate. Standing around doing nothing for 8 hours can make your legs, back and feet really ache if you’re nut used to it. And when you finish and want to go to bed and rest your aching limbs, you remember that you are in a tent and are sleeping on the floor. Even worse – if the weather’s good, you’ve got to try and go to sleep at maybe 9am in a boiling tent in bright sunlight. Good luck. After my night shift I dragged my air bed out into the shade created by a campervan, popped on an eye mask and slept outside.

Despite these downsides stewarding Glastonbury, or indeed any other festival, with Oxfam is an amazing experience. I’ve loved every festival I’ve been to with them.

But for next year, does anyone fancy buying me a campervan?