Glastonbury might be known as one of the world’s greenest festivals, thanks to its setting in the picturesque Somerset countryside, but every so often the weather turns foul and those verdant fields are churned up into brown sludge. As many fans will attest, over the years there have been a number of memorable occasions where guests spent more time trying to pry their wellies out of the mud than they did watching bands perform. Some take this as a cue to give up and go home, while others decide to lean into it, resulting in some of the more iconic pictures of Glastonbury Festival.
Here are five of the muddiest Glastonbury festivals in memory. Glastonbury tickets in 1982 cost just £8 for the 25,000 people that attended. Although, those lucky enough to secure a ticket were not as lucky in the weather department.
On Friday, the festival saw the highest rainfall recorded in a single day for 45 years. The ground then became swampy and slippery, but in true Glastonbury fashion, that didn’t stop the smiles. After over a decade of relatively dry weekends, 1997 at Glastonbury was dubbed “the year of the mud”.
“The downpour during the preceding days had turned the Arthurian verdure into a swamp of oozing, sucking chocolate mousse,” The Independent reported. “This was mud as you'd always imagined it: platonic mud, mud you could squeeze into gooey sculptures, mud which made every clod-lifting step a trial of strength. The famous Green Fields certainly weren't green, and th.
