by Yvonne Gordon 

As another Glastonbury festival drew to a close on Sunday and thousands of festival goers began leaving the site, organiser Michael Eavis said the festival had gone well despite the rain and mud. “We’re very pleased. It’s a pity about the rain but it’s a regular feature of the English summer,” he said. “The festival compensates for the rain, it cheers us all up.”

Over the weekend, there were about 2,000 performances on 35 different stages and by Sunday morning, there were a total of 166,000 people on site – up 32,000 from 2005 (the festival took a break in 2006). The size of the festival site was also up since 2005; some 1,000 acres bigger, after organisers secured agreement with Mendip Council for increased capacity.

Two new festival areas The Glade and The Park, which was organised by Eavis’s daughter Emily, who has worked with him on previous Glastonbury festivals, were also hailed a success. “The layout was superb. The Park worked really well, it was like a different event,” said Michael Eavis.

Eavis apologised for low levels of sound at the Pyramid Stage during The Killer’s performance on Saturday night, saying the system used may not have been strong enough, however it has since emerged that ‘abnormal meteorological conditions’ caused high sound levels outside the site, and engineers had been asked to turn the sound down by the local council.

There were 160 arrests over the weekend and by Sunday morning, there were over 1820 medical cases – mainly ‘slips and trips’ according to organisers, due to the large amounts of mud caused by the rain over the weekend. There was also one death, caused by a suspected drug overdose.

Green principles were once again at the heart of the festival’s ethos, and over the weekend, 160,000 100% recycled toilet rolls were given out on site – 4kms of toilet roll if it was outstretched. As well as aiming to recycle 50% of the rubbish generated by the festival, green innovations on site included solar-powered showers, wind-powered phone chargers and an entirely solar-powered music venue, Croissant Neuf. Ideas in the Green Futures field included a pedal-powered launderette and a mobile, pedal-powered children’s disco.

The festival also collected over 50,000 signatures for ICount, the climate-change campaign, encouraging each festival-goer to take steps to reduce their own carbon footprint.

Festival-goers began leaving the site on Sunday night with most leaving during Monday morning. Campers endured non-stop rain on Sunday night throughout the site and many left their tents up on leaving – these will be donated to charity. Long queues for buses off the site formed as early as 6.00am, with the queue for the shuttle bus to Castle Cary train station one of the longest queues at the festival bus station, taking many hours.

Queues to leave the car park also lasted for many hours. Excessive rain caused some cars and vans to become stuck in mud. According to organisers, traditionally the worst times to leave the festival are late Sunday night and Monday between 9am and 4pm, when delays in car parks in previous years have lasted up to 8 hours due to the amount of people leaving at the same time.

Organiser Michael Eavis says they do not plan to make the festival site any bigger for next year. “It’s big enough now for the next ten years,” he said. “We’ve no changes planned.” He also said that a headline act has been confirmed for 2008. He did not name it, however he confirmed it was not U2 or Muse.

Yvonne Gordon is a MelodyTrip writer. View her blogs from Glastonbury 2007 at http://melodytrip.com/Community/blogs/yvonne_gordon/archive/2007/06/23/mud-and-melodies-at-glastonbury.aspx