London - For those that enjoy Glastonbury from the comfort of their settee, it’s easy to sum up the festival as muddy mayhem.
But take a look at this picture and you’ll notice from the regimented lines of coloured tents, there is another – far more privileged and inviting – side to the festival.
These “haves” have dug deep for this exclusive campsite, which offers a veritable home-from-home with pre-pitched tents set on lush lawns.
The only thing to spoil the view from the hillside are the masses of “have-nots” crammed into cheap throwaway shelters pitched on a sea of sludge below.
Worthy View is popular with middle-class families looking for security and foreign festival-goers who don’t want to bring camping equipment on their travels. They can pay anything up to £1 000 (about R20 000) for the duration of the festival.
And all this comes on top of the £233 cost of a standard ticket. The glampers have access to showers and toilets, as well as hot food and their own car park just a short walk away.
Besides the eye-catching tents – they’re colour-coded to denote their size and cost and help guests find their way around – there are also wooden cabins known as podpads and luxury Mongolian-style yurts.
Tents on the site range in price from around £265 for a two-person scout-style for five nights up to £975 for an eight-person classic scout-style.
A basic podpad sleeping two is priced at £350 for five nights, while an octopad, which sleeps up to six, costs £945 for three nights.
These spacious structures have solid walls and floors and a 9ft high canvas roof fitted over tepee-style poles. It comes with four beds with mattresses and two airbeds. A 12ft yurt with space for four is priced at around £630 for five nights.
John Kitchen, 40, from London, is spending his second year using Worthy View. He said it added “a little bit of comfort” to the festival experience.
“We don’t have to cram ourselves in on the Wednesday and it’s pre-erected so we can just jump into the tent and crack on with the festival.
“It is really well set up and we will definitely use it again. It’s not over the top and is relatively affordable.”
Worthy View is not the only luxury add-on organised by Glastonbury. Camp Kerala is a part boutique hotel, part all-night party.
A photo posted by Camp Kerala (@campkerala) on Jun 21, 2016 at 3:36pm PDT
Each bespoke tent is outfitted with plush carpets, crisp bedding and fresh flowers. The on-site bar offers a glass of Yellow Label Brut Veuve Cliquot for £20, but a bottle of Rosé Dom Pérignon 2003 will set you back £530.
The Powder Room is another luxury accommodation site – this one offering hair straighteners and hairdryers.
The package at the site includes “luxury loos and showers, free mobile phone charging available in the bar area, bar and restaurant facilities, TV showing BBC Glastonbury footage, an undercover seating area with fire places to keep you warm and dry, pamper areas with hair dryers and straighteners, 24 hour security, and a free towel per person on arrival”.
For a fine-dining experience, revellers can head to Malinkey’s, near the Circus Field. It used to be a horsebox, but now it offers a silver service three-course meal for £24 a head.
Those who aren’t prepared to stretch to that can pick up a bag of chips for £3 with the hoi polloi.
A pork roll costs £6.50 and a pint of lager £5 at the stalls and van around the main site.
Revellers enjoyed their first full day after a dramatic journey to the festival. On Wednesday, thousands endured ten-hour traffic delays due to flooding on the festival fields.
Organisers had begged people travelling by road to abandon their journeys as routes leading to the Worthy Farmcampsite in Somerset were brought to a complete standstill.
Days of torrential rain left many of the festival car parks under water causing huge delays to festival-goers hoping to get in early on the first day.
Festival fans wearing wellies were eventually greeted inside the festival by thick mud baths, which caused real problems for campers pushing belongings on trolleys.
Daily Mail