So… On Saturday morning we woke up in our tent, on our lovely little patch of grass by the M4. it had been raining all night so unfortunately, due to us just popping the tent up and getting straight in it the previous night instead of pegging out all the right bits, we were a bit soggy. At about noon we managed to blow off the cobwebs of our hangovers, put the tent away (amazed Jill remembered how! Remembering that time when she first bought it, when Danny insisted on putting it up in the living room and couldn’t get it down again so it stayed there for a week until she YouTubed a video of some bloke showing you how you do it?) and recommenced trudging up the side of the motorway in search of our next lift. After doing a convincing impression of a human fire extingiusher, vomming up foam and partially digested fake ham into the hedge. One of our classiest moments, we feel.
Unfortunately we were fettled by the appearance of a police car that pulled in next to us and told us we weren’t allowed to be on the motorway, so we explained that we had been dropped off here (“by a friend” of course, not some random Polish truck driver) and told that the services were just up the road so we were trying to get to them. “Nope nope” said they, “The next services are 6 miles away, and you can’t stay on the motorway so you have to leave at the next junction”.
So we continued our mooch up the grassy verge, with tons of lovely hitching opportunities (mainly hippies in campers yelling “Want a lift to Glastonbury?!” ) which of course we had to decline, pointing out the patrol car crawling along the hard shoulder 100 yards behind us. Which incidentally was very rude, as if they were following us to the next junction they may aswell have given us a lift there. Quicker and easier all round, we reckon. Even the roadwork man in the truck putting the cones out offered to take us to the services but we couldn’t get in (which would have been a pretty random vehicle to add to the list) due to those pesky rozzers.

The next junction brought us to this random little place called Bradley Stoke. it was generally very posh and there was not much hitchable traffic going past, so we decided to find the nearest shop and buy a bottle of cider with the £1 Jill had found in her pocket (our hangovers were kicking in big style, and both of us had hideous DTs going on), have a spot of breakfast and assess the situation. We found an Aldi about fifteen minutes walk away. We also found an injured pigeon that Susan wanted to take to the vet. “We could call an ambulance and get them to take the pigeon to Glastonbury?”
“Yeah, the special Pigeon Ambulance. And I’ve totally heard that there are some very fine specialist travelling Pigeon Hospitals at the Glastonbury Festival! it’s a flawless plan.”
We got a bottle of cider anyway, used the facilities in the local pub (which was very posh, think they thought we were going in there to shoot up. in fact once we got outside, we noticed the sign saying “Although we do not insist on a shirt and tie, smart dress is essential.” ) and found ourselves a nice bus stop in which to have some breakfast, as it was far too good a neighbourhood for them to let vagrants like us picnic on their nice bits of grass. Susan had to open the cider on one of those metal electricity boxes as we had no bottle opener. After a very classy bus stop breakfast of cider, fake scotch eggs and bananas we got back on track and headed to the big roundabout just off the motorway, hoping to catch someone going back onto it. Which after a while, we did.

Ride #5 – 2 Random Blokes
Our first car of the trip (Joe doesn’t count, as we’ve already mentioned, due to his tiny penis) contained 2 blokes that were probably about our age, who felt sorry for us standing pitifully by the road and ignored by snobby Bradley Stokers, and agreed to take us to this big shopping park a few miles down the road, where apparently there would be many more opportunities to get a lift in the direction we were going. Susan was a bit wary of getting in with TWO blokes, but they seemed canny, were scrawny enough for us to take them out if they tried anything and we REALLY wanted to get out of FUCKiNG BRADLEY STOKE!

The dropped us at said retail park, where we chose a strategical spot on the roundabout leading to the motorway, next to the traffic lights so people would be stopping and held up our classy wrapping paper sign, trying our best not to look too insane. We were there a while, but then a car stopped for us.

Ride #6 – Bridget
Bridget was an awesome, lovely lady that had been to the retail park to buy her son a birthday present and ended up buying a zillion pairs of shoes from the Dune sale instead. She lived in Cheddar and said she would drop us there, which would mean we were so CLOSE to Glastonbury! We told her all about our crazy plans and our worldly adventures and she seemed genuinely interested in our daft anecdotes about hooker bars in Cambodia and the like. The journey whizzed by, and she dropped us in Cheddar with clear instructions on exactly where to head next and even gave us a couple of quid to buy some cider. Which we absolutely refused as it was nice enough for her to give us a lift all that way, without her giving US money for the pleasure! But she was insistent, and we gave in, thanked her loads and said goodbye. 

Cheddar was a lovely place. in fact, this trip has caused us to have a bit of a crush on Somerset. We really wanted to visit the Gorge and the Wookey Hole, which were on the way, but ended up hitching before that point. Bridget had told us to head for a place called Wells, where everyone went before Glasto for their beers etc, so we should have no problem squeezing into someones car who was heading that way. She said it was quite a way but “walkable” and went through lots of nice little Somerset villages, so off we went.

A bad thing about Somerset, however, is that they don’t appear to believe in pavements. Nor do the cars take account of this when honking and scowling at you for walking along the roadside. We had to hold in many urges to shout “Well where the FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO WALK THEN???”. We concluded that everyone in Somerset must go everywhere by car, and not walk anywhere at all. We attempted a bit of “active hitching” but to no avail, so kept on walking until we found a nice spot for some lunch next to a humerous sign advertising “Steve’s Horse Manure! it’s the best! With wiggly worms!”. Made fake ham and beetroot and red onion cheese sandwiches, and had some of the dubious pineapple, as it looked like it wasn’t going to last much longer before turning to mush. And of course, some vodka and coke. 

We hoped that at some point we would come across (in one of said quaint Somerset villages) an offy, from which we could purchase some cider with our Bridget money, but alas none was to be found. We had tried in Tesco in Cheddar, but everything was too expensive. it was one of those Tesco Express doodahs, so only sold the big brand things. So we kept on trundling up the imaginatively named “Wells Road” until we were absolutely knackered as it was all uphill and totally scorchio. Found a nice bit of grass by the road in a prime hitching position, sunblocked ourselves, made a new wrapping paper sign saying “Pilton” (as Glastonbury isn’t actually in Glastonbury, its in Pilton) and attempted to get us our next lift. We were there ages before a nice bloke took pity on us.

Ride #7 – Nice man who’s name we can’t remember
We were so happy when this guy stopped for us, as all of the locals must be sick to death of being invaded by Glasto revellers and we were starting to think that there wasn’t a snowballs chance any one would give us a lift and were just about to resign ourselves to walking all the way to Wells. He dropped us in Wells, near (duh duh DUH!) Lidl! There was much rejoicing, as we were sure we could get cheap cider from there! We ended up managing to get a 2 litres of dry cider, cloudy lemonade and cheap cola (for use as mixers for the pinge, as we had drunk the last of the vodka with dinner and were now down to pinge as our last booze. Seriously a dire state of affairs.). Result.

The bloke who had just dropped us off had pointed us in the right direction for Glastonbury. “Straight down that road” , imaginatively titled “Glastonbury Road”. After getting a photo of Jill posing like a wanker under a road sign saying “Glastonbury 5 miles”, we set off. We managed to flag down another car, not too far down the road who agreed to take us to Glastonbury town.

Ride #8 – Bloke with the REALLY HOT car who’s name we can’t remember (we know, we forgot our note pad to record things on the way, so it’s down to our poor old pinge-addled memories)
it wasn’t hot as in “hawt”, it was just really, really warm. We were totally cooking but you feel guilty opening other peoples car windows if they are obviously comfortable enough with the temperature to leave them closed. Especially if you’re hitchhiking! So we roasted our way to Glastonbury town centre, chatting about how lovely Somerset is, and how we hadn’t seen any charvers so far. No seriously, even the teenage mothers were nicely dressed and well spoken!

He dropped us in the town and pointed us in the direction of Pilton. Can you guess what the street was called? Yes, “Pilton Road”. The unimaginative Somerset street names had now become a bit of a running joke. We headed off that way, on the non-existant pavement, trying to hitch a ride from anyone going past and after about 10 minutes of walking a car stopped. We didn’t initially think they had stopped for US, as when it went past, the car looked full but no, bless them they all just budged up and made room for me, Susan and all our stuff. They were going to the festival, and offered to take us right up to the pedestrian gate.

Yup yup. We made it…but now for the REALLY hard part. Getting in! 
Stay tuned for Episode 3!