Chapter 6: Zen in the Art of Breaking into Glastonbury

Chideock to Chideock

The edge of a Glastonbury campsite (not the actual perimeter wall).

There was a time when many young people would hitchhike to Glastonbury Festival, when it was the politically loaded, freewheeling way to go. It was in fact entirely part of the experience, embodying what the festival stood for. Today most people drive there or perhaps get the bus. Nevertheless, many of those who picked me up in the days preceding presumed I was going, so in the end, I decided that’s probably where I ought to go. I didn’t have a ticket but ever since its foundation people have broken into Glastonbury so I thought I’d give it a crack.

I planned my assault in a small village called Chideock on the south Dorset coast, two miles west of Bridport. My grandmother had lived there nestled in the Jurassic valleys until she passed away a few months ago. I was meeting my uncle, Matt, at her old house, where for as long as I can remember we’d go and explore the ancient footpaths and crumbling, fossilised coastline that surrounds the village.

In the afternoon I walked along a stretch of the coast, past a smugglers’ cottage and a ruined chapel, through farms and over cliffs, the wrinkled sea twinkling far below. That evening in the Clock Matt and I discussed possible routes into the festival, helped by the barmaid and the handful of old-faithfuls propping up the bar.

Many of the drivers I’d had in recent days had also given me snippets of advice, sometimes practical and sometimes more philosophical.

Cath had taken me from Dorchester to Chideock. She was on the way back to Totnes. She recalled, full of nostalgia, the life-changing effect Glastonbury had had on her while she was a student. “Me and some girlfriends would hitchhike there and it was at Glasto that I realised there was a whole other way of life.” She travelled around Britain and Europe, hitchhiking much of it, revelling in the newfound freedom. She opened her mind and saw the world in an entirely new, saturated light.

Now she lived in Totnes, a town famed for its alternative outlook. She was raising a daughter on her own and was a results-focused mediative therapist by trade. It involved guiding clients using meditation to focus on overcoming small barriers, bit by bit making steady progress. I thought it sounded a little like ‘Manifesting’, a recent internet trend evangelised by celebrities like Oprah Winfrey. “It’s similar for sure,” Cath replied, “Manifesting’s normally a little more sweeping and involves much bigger ideas about what you want to achieve in life. So you might manifest being wealthy for instance. In your head, you have to genuinely believe that you’re wealthy already. Then the wealth will follow. It doesn’t have to be about money, of course, it could be anything.” Usually on the internet it is about money.

“You should try and manifest your way into Glastonbury,” she suggested, “It’s about feelings mostly so you have to imagine that feeling of getting into the festival - meeting your friends, having that first sip of beer or whatever. Really try to create that and you’ll find a way in for sure.”

Cath had filled me with confidence and as Matt dropped me on the Ilchester bypass, tossing me a few bags of peanuts to keep me going, I was pretty sure by the evening I’d be in there. Not long after I was in a small fiesta with a 21-year-old called Coady. He was on his way back from a funeral but was heading in the general direction to get a new vape so didn’t mind taking me right to the festival gates. “Besides,” he said, “I’d only be playing Call Of Duty otherwise.”

He dropped me off about midday, taking my number so I could update him on my progress and as I stood by the huge gates, lorries and buses throwing dust in the humid air, I realised that I really didn’t have a plan. Despite my confidence and Cath’s advice, I had no idea how I'd actually breach the multimillion-pound perimeter and its regiments of security guards.

I spent a few hours trying to sidle up to roadies and lorry drivers asking if I could hide in their vans but they all politely declined. It wasn’t worth the risk, apparently the checks were too rigorous. I tried to walk casually straight through the gates and spent a great deal of time mooching aimlessly around the perimeter looking for any sort of weak point. I found none. I ended up in a campsite full of off-duty security guards, who unsurprisingly weren’t best pleased when I asked if they knew of any way to get in. “It’s impossible mate,” they told me smugly, “Someone got caught crawling through the sewer yesterday.”

No matter how hard I imagined myself in there, I couldn’t get in. The closest I came was after two hours of walking incognito down country lanes with a group of off-duty guards on their way into the festival. I got through several layers of security just by association but when we came to the final hurdle a rather nasal man pointed me out loudly to the wristband-checkers, “He’s not staff!” he whined and that was the end of that.

That left me with just one more option: jumping the fence. They’d spent well over a million pounds designing it and ensuring the wall was literally unscalable. At 4-metres high and grapple-proof, it certainly was a tall order. Judging from the map, the only place this could be possible would be where the forest and the wall intersected - I speculated there must be some climbable trees to help me. With all other options exhausted I set off.

I had been prepared for this stage of the assault by another Dorset driver. Charles had picked me up with his daughter, Sam, and driven me down to Dorchester. We drove along listening to very quiet heavy metal. He was a night guard by profession but nature was in his bones. As a child, he had lived in Ohio and his mother had remarried a Native American man. His stepfather took the family to grow up in the wild and had taught them all to forage, hunt and fish.

Growing up in the forests, catfish was their main staple, caught from the mighty River Ohio. They could catch 12 in an hour he recalled - resources had been more plentiful then. Aged 14 he returned to England and went to school.

I’d recently taken an interest in Native American philosophies. At COP26 I found the indigenous activists to be the most powerful and inspiring people there. A group of impassioned women made virulent calls to be listened to and to have their way of life respected. They put the violence and ignorance of my countrymen and forebears to bitter shame. There would be no climate catastrophe if indigenous people still controlled their lands

‘Face the Elephant in the Room’: Indigenous leaders at COP26, Glasgow, 2021

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Charles remembered his stepfather as a man of very few words. “Be quiet in your own head,” he used to teach him, “That way you can listen to others but more importantly you can hear the world around you.” Doing this allows your mind to be filled not with pointless thoughts but with the sound of the birds, the soft rustle of an animal’s tread or the trickle of a nearby stream. The Obijwe historian, Francis Assikinack explains it beautifully:

“It was chiefly owing to their deep contemplation in their silent retreats in the days of youth that the old Indian orators acquired the habit of carefully arranging their thoughts. They listened to the warbling of birds and noted the grandeur and the beauties of the forest. The majestic clouds - which appear like mountains of granite floating in the air - the golden tints of a summer evening sky, and all the changes in nature, possessed a mysterious significance.”

Charles still practised what he was taught. “It’s funny,” he told me, “Different lands have very different vibes, or spirits if you like. You can feel it if you only try.”

The other reason to be quiet-minded, he continued, was so you could learn how to walk. Being able to stalk through the forest without making a sound is no easy thing. It is in a sense a meditation that can only be achieved if the mind is perfectly silent.

He offered a final piece of advice before he dropped me. “You’re not really an adult until you’re 40,” he said, “Life is long, my friend, not short.”

In the Eavis’s blooming woodland I thought back to Charles’ words and tried to be silent in my head, stalking through the woods as quietly as I could. After a couple of hours though, I’d barely made any progress and was still a long way from the fence. It was exhilarating sneaking past security checkpoints, through tunnels and along streams but it was exhausting and what little progress I made through the thick undergrowth was far from quiet. After a few hours of near-imperceptible advance, I was caught crossing a track by the dog unit

Forests surrounding Glastonbury festival.

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Confronted by the large guard I tried to act casual. “Any idea where the entrance is…?” I said, picking twigs out of my ears. He didn’t see the funny side and sent me back to another security guard. I tried to evade him too but soon realised I was being followed. After being caught sneaking past a third, they told me gruffly to either piss off to the main road or else be ‘intercepted’. I knew that meant being strip searched and driven 30 miles away so a little deflated, I trudged towards the main road. I was drenched in sweat and covered in dirt. My jeans had been ripped by brambles and I was gasping for some water. The distant roar of the festival crowds grew ever more distant.

I met some volunteer stewards manning a distant checkpoint who watered me and sympathised with my struggle. One of them was particularly glum as he’d had his free wristband, the only reason he was doing the job, cut off for taking a selfie with Bastille during a shift. His boss had been uncompromising and banished him to this far-off checkpoint. “You couldn’t even see who it was in the photo,” he sulked as he tried to toss stones into a cup.

Their only suggestion was to try going through the gates at 8 o’clock when the stewards swap over. The nearest gate was three miles away and still determined I rushed off to try my luck one last time. As I hurried down the main road an Audi pulled up and wound down the window.

“Do you want a lift?” the good Samaritan offered.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Bridport.”

Now the game really was up. I chucked my bags in and sank into the passenger seat, relieved to be off my feet. A strong smell of wild garlic emanated from my clothes

The roads a few miles from the festival.

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Aaron was driving back from the festival. He’d spent the day there as his partner ran a stage with the musician Billy Bragg. He was sad it was so difficult to get in these days and was a little disappointed at the extortionate cost of the tickets. Like many I’d met, he remembered Glastonbury when it was just a few quid to get in. He described the vibe now as a little “smug”.

It had begun to rain as we drove on through the gathering dusk. The sky was broken and dramatic. Aaron took me through his many jobs and many more interests: he was currently working as a stone mason and restorer but he was also a survival expert, knew a great deal about motorcycles and was a specialist in Japanese martial arts.

This last one particularly pricked my interest since one of the two books I had with me was about something similar. It was called Zen in the Art of Archery by a German philosopher, Eugen Herrigel. It details Herrigel’s attempts in the ‘30s to learn Zen in Japan as taught by a great master using archery. Its effect is not to teach you about archery nor to allow a proper understanding of Zen, it is much too short, but it gives a strong sense of the process being far more important than the outcome. Herrigel’s master was indifferent to where his arrows ended up but was focused entirely on the technique with which it was shot.

Aaron knew the book well. He recounted how years ago at a martial arts centre in London he’d watched an archer shooting at a target. She shot beautifully and her arrows pierced the target with mesmeric precision. He’d stood marvelling at her for a long while before a fellow onlooker observed that though she would have been formidable on the battlefield, she lacked something spiritual in her technique. “At the time,” Aaron recalled, “I just thought the bloke was being a bit of a prick! But years later I realised he was right. What exactly it was I couldn’t say, but she did lack something.”

Similar themes are found throughout many Japanese martial arts. “You see, the dō in all these martial arts - judō, aikidō, iaidō - means “the way”. The point is not the fighting itself but the spiritual training involved in the process.”

“Your attempt to break into Glastonbury today,” he said contemplatively, “was nothing to do with getting into the festival really. It was about the attempt and what that stood for.” I thought back to Cath, Coady and Charles, the nasal staff, stewards and van drivers and the bloke who was sat in the rain sulking about his selfie with Bastille. The pungent scent of wild garlic still filled the car. I realised Aaron was absolutely right.

After an hour or so we arrived in Bridport, weaving through the old rope factories. Aaron kindly offered to take me for a pint and we sat in the window of a pub and sipped on a well-earned beer as he told me what a great impact T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets had had on him. The line that spoke most was from the final of the four poems, Little Gidding, and he recited it with reverence, “A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything).”

No matter how much I tried to understand the lines, then and since, I haven’t been able to wrap my head around them. Maybe I will one day - like the Zen archer these things require time and experience - but afterwards, when I read the whole poem, much like Paul, his new house and East Coker, I realised there was an almost uncanny relevance to that day’s endeavours: “And the end of all our exploring,” Eliot writes, “Will be to arrive where we first started.”

My uncle arrived in his van and we drove over the hill back to Chideock

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My uncle, Matt, on the South Dorset Coast, Golden Cap in the background.