So after last year’s hiatus Glastonbury returned with a bang in 2013 and several of the areas took the opportunity to completely reinvent themselves, giving us plenty of new venues to explore and enjoy. The Dance Village was renamed “Silver Hayes” and included the new “Sonic”, “Gulley” and “Blues” stages to varying success, while the “Pussy Parlure Nouveau” upgraded to a larger space and “Wow” became a huge boat.

The Arcadia rig moved out of the South East corner in order to ease congestion while Shangri-La took on a new “Heaven and Hell” format. The Common and Block 9 swapped fields and both included plenty of new late night attractions. The William’s Green area returned with a new stage and a food court. In the Theatre Field “Blazing Saddles” was replaced by “The Summerhouse” while elsewhere the previous “Bourbon Street” and “Glade” Stages sadly disappeared.

Infrastructure-wise noticeably more longdrop toilets have been installed since 2011 together with the addition of some wonderful composting loos which remained totally odour-free for the duration of the festival. There was a new Farmers Market in the Greenpeace Field which concentrated on the plight of the Arctic as its theme. My personal experience of security was that it was much more low key and friendly than previous festivals and although we had several hours of rain on the Thursday it didn’t stay muddy for long and for the rest of the festival it remained dry and predominantly fine.

As always, I’ve split my Glastonbury photos down into the customary 3 sub-galleries. Glastonbury 2013 was right out of the top drawer. Let’s hope that 2014 is just as memorable.