In short
- Soft bags, always. Wheeled suitcases are useless on grass and waste space in a minibus.
- Agree the shared kit before you pack. Four gazebos in one vehicle is a real thing that happens.
- A trolley earns its space. The walk from where vehicles stop to where you camp is long.
- Leave the Wednesday before dawn if you want a decent pitch without a four-hour queue.
- Everything comes home wetter and heavier. Bin bags are the most useful thing you will pack.
Pack for the vehicle first
Most packing advice for Glastonbury assumes you are driving yourself with a boot to fill. Sharing a vehicle changes the calculation: your kit is competing for space with everyone else's, and a minibus with sixteen seats occupied has surprisingly little room left.
Rigid suitcases are the main offender. They are efficient in a car boot and useless in a minibus, where load space is irregular and made up of gaps that a soft holdall will fill and a hard shell will not. If your group all bring wheeled cases, you will need a bigger vehicle for the same number of people.
| Good | Bad |
|---|---|
| Soft holdalls and rucksacks | Hard-shell wheeled suitcases |
| Compression sacks for sleeping bags | Loose bedding |
| Collapsible chairs | Rigid camping furniture |
| Soft cool bags | Large rigid cool boxes |
| One shared gazebo | One gazebo per person |
The shared kit conversation
Have it before anyone packs. Every year, groups arrive with four stoves, three gazebos and no bin bags, because everyone assumed someone else had not brought one and brought one anyway.
Assign the bulky shared items to specific people: the gazebo, the stove, the water carrier, the shared cool bag. It takes one message and it can save an entire vehicle size.
The walk from the vehicle
Wherever a vehicle is permitted to stop, there is a substantial walk to where you will camp, often across uneven ground and sometimes in rain. Whatever you pack, you carry it that distance, usually while also carrying whatever you bought on the way.
A trolley or a sack barrow is worth the space it occupies in the vehicle, and it is worth agreeing one for the group rather than each person carrying separately in multiple trips.
Timing the Wednesday
Gates open Wednesday and the arrival window shapes the whole festival. Leaving Kent before dawn puts you on site mid-morning with a pitch you chose. Leaving at a civilised hour puts you in a queue that has been building since first light.
| Leave Kent | On site | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday night | Gates opening | Shortest queue, best pitch, no sleep. |
| 03:00–05:00 | Mid-morning | The sensible compromise. Most of our bookings. |
| 07:00–09:00 | Early afternoon | Two to four hours of queue. A long walk to a remaining pitch. |
| Thursday | Roads clear | Easy travel, limited camping choice. |
Weather, mud and coming home
Worthy Farm is a working dairy farm and in rain it behaves like one. Wellies, waterproofs and a complete change of clothing are not optional extras; they are core kit, and they take real space that people forget to allow for when packing in dry June weather.
Everything comes home wetter, dirtier and heavier than it went. Bin bags to separate the wet and muddy items are the single most useful thing you can pack, both for your own belongings and for the vehicle you are sharing.
Most operators, ourselves included, charge for cleaning if a vehicle needs proper attention afterwards. A handful of bin bags almost always avoids it.
The Monday
The site empties onto a small road network and the queue is substantial. Leaving later in the day frequently gets you home sooner than leaving first thing, which is counterintuitive and consistently true.
Agree the meeting point and the departure time before the festival starts, while everyone still has a charged phone and the capacity to remember a plan.