Young Border musicans Maidie Dawson and Lachlan Mitchell are on the trip of a lifetime to the United Kingdom as part of the inaugural exchange program between Dreamfields and the Somerset Rural Youth Project. The pair will keep a diary for The Border Mail during their trip.
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Day 4
Today was the day we finally got to Glastonbury. Starting off the morning was a sleep in before having a full English breakfast made by the lovely Barbarra, who is looking after us in the B&B. During this breakfast we were introduced to something neither of us had come across before, fried toast. Not something that would convince me to fork out for a deep fryer. Soon after downing this there was a knock on the door, James was here to pick us up. James runs the music side of the Somerset Rural youth project. This involves running workshops in communities for drumming and guitar, organizing gigs and performance opportunities, running the studio space for recording and practice plus various other fund raising events, as well as lecturing at the local college.
We piled into a van emblazoned with the youth project logo and James started driving us out towards Glastonbury. First we passed through a town called “Street”, which is the location of Clarks, a shoe manufacturer. Following this we arrived at Glastonbury and James drove us down the Main Street making note of the unique array of people and businesses. Glastonbury is very much an alternative town with stores selling items from cross chains to cauldrons. The people where aslo very colourful. We spotted a town crier in a bright green imperial uniform and a man in a rainbow jacket. Once we were through Glastonbury we still had a bit of time before we where due to meet Michael Evais, so James took us down the road to the town of Shepton Mallet. The main reason for this was to highlight the difference between Glastonbury and surrounding towns, highlighted by the main street, which was the normal shades of grey.
We then turned around and headed into the property of Michael Eavis, the site of the Glastonbury music festival. Michael's property comes off the town of Pilton, a town he invests a lot of money in for his local community, with the towns community center built by him. As we started to drive into the property the first thing to really grab our eye was the pyramid stage being built. This is the main stage of the festival, previously hosting the likes of Coldplay, and Florence and the Machine.This year it will host Ed Sheeran, The Foo Fighters and Radiohead. Following this we passed the milking shed for his dairy cows before coming across the main offices for the farm and the music festival. We then proceeded inside and Michael's receptionist called him to announce we had arrived.
Michael Eavis was very much as we had heard him described, mildly eccentric and straight to the point, but also very grounded and welcoming for a man of his position. Michael then proceeded to give us a tour of the property. First we drove to the pyramid stage, and then from there around the property with Michael stopping by every worker to have a quick chat. One interesting thing was when we drove by the border of the site there were a couple workers fixing a pipe. Turns out someone had cut a hole through the pipe trying to make a secret entrance to enter the music festival, some serious commitment there. As we drove he was surprised to discover that many of the sayings we have in Australia are actually the same as England, not sure what differences he expected but it made for an interesting conversation with Maidie managing to show an impressive knowledge of Australian sayings much to Michael’s entertainment. The site had an eclectic display of items from old cars, pirate ship play equipment and giant farm machinery grass hoppers. Once we had finished traversing around the farm he gave us a tour of the offices and introduced us to his daughter Emily Eavis and other staff.
After we said our goodbyes to Michael we headed back into Glastonbury for lunch and went to see the Glastonbury Tor. The Tor is a watch tower like structure on top of a reasonably tall and steep hill, which we climbed. Apparently the Glastonbury Tor has links to the legend of King Arthur and sits on a leger line, which make up a network of sites across the country. That means the site had a spiritual purpose rather than military, despite the watchtower like structure. Following this we went into town to refuel at a café called “The Rainbows End”.
Once finishing at Glastonbury we headed to the Somerset Rural Project headquarters, which James informed us they call “Base”. Here we met Rich again as well as Nik and the other staff. The base was a reasonable extensive setup with a woodworking area, mechanics workshop, music studio, youth chill room, offices and a warehouse for storing gear. Here we said goodbye to James as he had a workshop to teach. While waiting for Gilo, a youth worker to pick us up we played some music with the gear in the studio.
Gilo arrived about 6pm and we pilled in a van to head out to the North Petherton Youth Club. On the way we picked up another youth worker Jemma. Youth clubs seem to have a similar structure to youth groups back home, only difference is they are not church based. So here we played some music for the youth and chatted about the animals in Australia, and differences in things, such as lollies and sweets, and pants and trousers. Then once finished at the club we headed back to our accommodation for a well earned rest.
Day 3
Today is the day we head to Somerset to start the actual Dreamfields exchange. You may have noticed in the last entry that I said we where heading to Glastonbury, turns out this was wrong, we actually needed to go to Bridgewater. We did not realise this until half way through the day. Goes to show I probably should have read the emails a bit more closely. So we woke up reasonable early and googled the route from Kings Cross station to Glastonbury, which involved going to Paddington station before catching a Greater Western rail train to Bath.
So this worked out quite well as it gave us an excuse to see Bath. For those that don’t know Bath is a special location for two reasons. First all the buildings are made of a yellow stone called bath stone, which makes for a unique sight. Secondly the town contains an old roman bath, which is a fascinating site dating back to 70AD. The bath house is designed to give people a glimpse into Roman life with an audio tour, reenactments and plenty of archaeological discoveries on display. Once we had finished the tour we armed ourselves with some chocolate from the gift shop and checked out the Bath Abbey, which is the church in town. Like many of the churches around Europe it is an awe-inspiring building with beautiful stain class windows and much history. Part of this history also includes the burial place of Admiral Arthur Phillip, the first governor of NSW.
After all this we had contacted James from the Somerset Youth Project and realised that our destination was Bridgewater, not Glastonbury. Thankfully it was an easy trip from there heading to Bristol, then to Bridgewater by train. At the Bridgewater station we where greeted by Rich, who gave us a lift to our B&B. Rich works as a teacher of mechanics to the youth through the project. The B&B we are staying at is called Rockfield House. It’s a beautiful location surrounded by fields of grass, haven’t seen any fields of rocks though, so the name is a bit deceptive. Rockfield house is probably the most “English” place I have ever stayed with carpet for the toilet floor and wallpaper of tiles, instead of actual tiles. Looks like it will be a relaxing place to stay. So on that note we are going to turn in for a early night to get ready to head to the Glastonbury music festival site tomorrow, and meet Michael Eavis.