Glastonbury - London 2004

5th July 2004

Hello again all!

Hope you are all well. Last time I wrote I was at J'Burg airport waiting for a plane to London. Africa holiday over, European holiday about to begin!!!

Well it's here and so far it's been a blast! Arrived Thu 24/6 at 6am and eventually got to Colin's around 9am. No rest though. Off we went straightaway to Glastonbury on the bus which took around 4 hours. When we got to Glastonbury I couldn't quite believe what I was in for the next 3 days! Whatan amazing place. It was so big! A music festival that I will never see in Australia. 120,000 people camping on a farm to watch 3 days of music.Unreal! We watched the England v Portugal Euro 2004 match on the big screen with over 80,000 screaming English fans watching the game and that was anexperience in itself! Soccer mad English fans going mad! Great fun!

I can't wait to show people the photos of Glastonbury although I don't think they will serve it justice. It was a city in the middle of a farm! I can'tquite get over that as the infrastructure to support the festival was amazing! The musical acts were amazing! The people I was with were amazing!Basically, the whole thing just blew me away! I may have been on the road for the past month and probably in need of a rest but it was so cool itdidn't matter! It rained on the Saturday which just caused a mud bath and everyone was sliding around in sludge all day trying to avoid falling overbut it didn't matter. The acts were so great we just kept watching and dancing!

We saw a lot of bands perform including Groove Armarda, Franz Ferdinand, Chemical Brothers, Oasis, Sister Sledge, Scissor Sisters, Black Eyed Peas,Paul McCartney, James Brown, Morrisey, Muse and many others that I can't even think of. To see so many great acts in 3 days was just great. There arerumours that U2 are going to play at next year's festival and if that is the case I am just going to have to come back!!! Was too much fun!

The camping was fine considering I had just spent the last month camping but on the Monday when we left I was happy to finally know I would be sleepingin a bed some time soon....

I met Pete (my school mate over here for those who do not know) on Monday night and had dinner with Pete and his wife Sandra which was cool. Sean(another school mate) joined us for a drink and it was great to catch up. I stayed at Pete's as we had golf planned for Tuesday.

What a great day Tuesday was. Pete and I went down to Royal St. Georges Golf club which is in Sandwich. Probably about 2 hours out of London. For thoseof you that do not know, Greg Norman won his second British Open at Royal St. Georges in 1993 and to get to play that course was a big thrill....Iknow, geeky....but I'm on holiday's so who cares!!!

It just got better on Wednesday as Colin and I went to Wimbledon and got to get onto centre court! Was a fluke really. We got a ground pass for 13pounds. Straight in, no worries and we went to the Big Screen on the hill thinking we would watch the tennis from there and just wander around theback courts. We watched Henman v Ancic and all the English fans were out in force again. Hoping their English Henman would win and give them somethingto cheer about after the Euro 2004 defeat to Portugal! They were sadly disappointed when Tim lost but it was great to be there anyway.

A workmate of Colin's was also at Wimbledon on Wednesday and we met up with her after the Henman match. She had centre court tickets which was great asshe said Colin and I could borrow them to go onto centre court to watch the Hewitt match for a little while to experience it and take pictures etc. Thatwas cool so when we did go onto Centre court, we took our pictures etc. In the meantime Trisa (Colin's friend) had asked the usher if we could stay inand he said yes if we could find some spare seats. We did and that's how we got onto centre court! We watched the whole of the Hewitt v Federer matchand I couldn't have been a happier camper! How cool to get onto centre court.

The rest of the week has been spent pretty much shopping and sightseeing. Colin came sightseeing with me and we had a great day out. We walked so much but I'll share the sightseeing stuff when I see you all because some of itis just down right geeky!!! Visting Freddie Mercury's house? That pretty much sums it up!!!

The weekend has been pretty relaxed. Saturday we went to a festival in a park in North London and Sunday we spent at the pub catching up with the people that all went to Glastonbury last week. Pretty nice actually. So there you have it. My travel diary/update to you all! I am heading to Rome tomorrow and just can't wait so I'm sure I'll have more stories to tell sometime soon!

Lots of love to you all, hope you are well and send me some stories of your own if there's anything interesting to share!

Dave
:-)