Glastonbury! ... we came for the aliens, missed them and the show too!

Vegan meal at Hundred Monkeys

Glastonbury! Home of one of the worlds largest outdoor concert. We missed the concert in our planning, because the tickets were sold out already by October 2008. For those who have attended stage 13 in Alberta, this is like stage 13 on drugs, a lot of them. There are 177,000 festival go-ers who paid for thier tickets, about another 10,000 who sneak in, and then the 25,000 people who run the show. SO, imagine a barren farm, that in the matter of two days, turns into a city of over 200,000 people. Needless to say, as we were arriving into Glastonbury on the 1st day of the festival, traffic was horrible. It took us about 5 hours to get from London to Glastonbury, train and 2 busses.

After that little set back, we were in for smooth sailing. Almost. We spent the time in Glastonbury getting to know the locals and seeing the few sights. This is the legendary home of King Arthur, the mystical Thorn bush of Joseph of Arimathia (Jesus's Uncle), and the Chalice well.
It is also a very spiritual place, the town centre is filled with alternative healing clinics, alternative book stores that sell books on healing, usual powers, magic and paganism (I picked one up myself! To add to our traveling library), as well as people who doTarot readings and psychics.
It has a very comforting feel to it. There have been a lot of crop circles that have appeared in the area since the 1950s and Ewa was really excited to find a tour that took you around to all the different recent ones. But we found out later that not many tours were offered and private ones were way out of our budget, would have been so amazing to be able to see one in real life!
The first night after our grueling time in traffic, and the thundershowers we went out for a bite to eat in a traditional pub in the lower level of a B&B. The pub was decked out just the way you would imagine an old-school British pub would be. Cozy, low lighting a lot of locals pulled up to the bar and a great pub menu! Fish and chips and a steak sandwhich! This was our first real taste of English fish & chips and the obligatory warm beer! We headed back to the B&B that we booked (No.1 Park Terrace) and called it quits.

The next morning the traditional English breakfast that the owners cooked up was amazing! The food was delicious and hot right from the grill! Eggs, bacon, sausage, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes and toast. Fresh fruit, coffee, teas, cereal... a real cookup! The rain continued and so we walked around the town, dodged the rain spent a few hours in the local shops and bookstores. When the rain let up in the day, and we spent the night outside of a local pub, meeting a few of the local Glastonbury townsfolk. Two of the people that we met were cooks at the local 100 Monkey Cafe. Some were amazing new age hippies with a great out look on life. They had convinced us (Chad) to hike up the Tor that night and see the sunrise from the top. To fuel up for the journey we headed to a kebab shop for a bite to eat. Yes, Kebabs, the worst idea since Donairs after the pub. The place was packed, full of young kids, drunks and random hungry people like us :) Then things got a bit ugly when a drunk guy (probably in his early 50s) and all of his drunk buddies started yelling at the clerk behind the counter that they made his pizza wrong - I wanted grilled tomatos not tomato sauce! So Chad being the nice guy that he is tried to calm them down (bad idea) and said something along the lines of Come on man, tomato tomato, give the guy a break. Yes that was a fantastic idea... the guy then proceded to call Chad a Fukn idiot and to keep his mouth shut..eeep. More yelling swearing, and spitting as he was yelling, his buddies joined in and we were threatened for a good five ten minutes while I stood between Chad and the drunk guy telling him sorry, no problem.. getting spat at, pleasant. Bloody marvelous! ha. A random stranger tried to help us out and stepped inbetween us and got attacked by them. When they finally left we were a bit shaken up. Luckily they were not waiting outside for us as promised and we just went back to our B & B. We didn't feel like heading out to the Tor to watch the sunrise anymore :( we just went to bed feeling very lucky to have escaped the drunks.

The next day, we awoke to beautiful sunshine and another great breakfast. After meandering around a little while we decided to hike up the Tor, an old hill that used to be an island when the area used to be flooded. In the midevil ages, dams and dykes were built to divert the waters, creating the praries around Tor today. There are remains of a castle tower on the top of Tor and there have been archeological digs that date back to the 6th century when King Arthur was supposed to have lived in the area.

The Tor

After hiking down from the Tor we stopped at the Glastonbury Abbey, where the remains of King Arthur were supposed to have been fond in late 1186. The Abbey was a focal point of the Christian religion in England for four hundred years. In the early 1500's it was abandoned as were hundreds of other monasteries throughout England.

That night we were off to visit our friends from the 100 Monkey Cafe. This little cafe is a great; organic, locally produced and grown,a shop that has amazing food at really good prices! The top picture is what Chad had to eat that night.

Glastonbury Abbey

written by  ECRadventure on June 27, 2009 from Glastonbury, United Kingdom
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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