Dave Saunders, 2007

My first Glastonbury was 2007. The pictures are from the Wednesday night... it was actually very nice weather...before the rains came. Despite the awful mud I absolutely loved it. Being from Yorkshire I hadn’t ventured this far south to a festival yet but had been to the Leeds part of Leeds/Reading lots of times and considered myself a bit of a festival veteran. Glastonbury absolutely blew me away though. Over the years festivals were becoming less about watching the bands I was a rabid devotee of and more about finding out about and trying new things and so I knew that this was the festival for me from now on (I’ve only missed one since then).

A big highlight for me was meeting up with some friends from uni and then, by chance, bumping into more really close friends from uni who we didn’t know were coming (they were both teachers and had bunked off to be there so had kept quiet about going). We all watched Arcade Fire together and it was magic.

We had to leave on the Sunday night so set off after The Who... well I tried. My car broke down in the mud. It quickly became clear there would be no rescue until the sun came up in 6 hours. I decided it wait it out alone so friends from my car squeezed into others and I tried to get comfortable. After a few minutes I realised that wasn’t going to happen so I got my waterproofs on and spent the night helping to push cars stuck in the mud. I think I earned a lot of Glastonbury karma that night.

Glastonbury wasn’t the only reason I moved to Somerset 3 years ago but it certainly helped.