United Kingdom
Glastonbury Town Music Festival Druid Camp Crop Circles Goddess Conference Cornwall
Tour Home Click on any picture to see a larger version of it. Ecolass Home
Glastonbury, our home for the summer
We reached England on June 14, 2004, and more than 8 weeks of our summer were spent in Glastonbury. Many of our UK pictures were lost with the theft of our laptop computers in August, so there aren't as many as we'd like to have shown. But here's a nice sample of our Glastonbury apartment and our favorite sight in town, the Chalice Well and Gardens.
| Our apartment was a converted garage. |
| The table the laptops were stolen from :( |
| The place was actually quite spacious. |
| We even had a TV (for Olympics watching). |
| Our comfy bed. |
| My favorite Glastonbury road sign - Old People Crossing |
| The Chalice Well Garden entrance. |
| This sacred symbol is found all around the gardens. |
| This new addition has the water meandering through the lower garden. |
| Great seating options are scattered throughout. |
| The actual well. It's been in the spot since ancient times. |
| My favorite trellis walkway. |
The Glastonbury Music Festival
The Glastonbury Music Festival is the largest musical event in Europe. Check out our letter on the enormity of it. It's got a bit of a "hippy" feel to it, and could most closely be compared to Woodstock - only much larger. The festival itself is about 5 miles outside of Glastonbury in a town called Pilton. In its early days, it was a much smaller affair called the Pilton Pop Festival.We tried to take photos from a nearby hill to provide a visual demonstration of its vastness. But we could only get one stage at a time in each picture. You really wouldn't be able to get a complete view unless you could get an aerial photo. But the first 3 shots below are our attempt at capturing large sections of it on film.
| The Dance tent. |
| The Circus big top. |
| The Pyramid main stage (where Oasis played). |
| Nelly Furtado |
| Oasis |
| Suzanne Vega (Our favorite performance) |
| You could climb inside this turtle. It was popular with kids. |
| And there were some things for adults, too. |
| After it rained the second day, walking in the mud became a challenge. |
| Jeff got called on stage for one of the circus acts. |
| That little girl beat all 4 guys in tug-of-war. ;) |
| Many unique things were done with garbage. |
| Yes, this is actually plastic bag art. |
| We had a beautiful moon for our evening bike trip back to Glastonbury. |
| The moon watches the festival finale. |
The Druid Camp (in Wales)
This little section is from our travels in Wales. The Druid Camp was a very deep, moving experience. So much so, that we have even been discussing how to rearrange our travel plans to make it to next year's camp. For more details on our camp encounter, see Adrienne's e-mail "A Week Away in Wales" and Jeff's e-mail "Druid Wisdom Camp".Our camping neighbors, Karina and David, were kind enough to share their pictures with us, but we lost them along with the ones we took when the laptops disappeared. Perhaps this is a sign that we should definitely go back next year!
The Crop Circle Symposium
We had anticipated that the Crop Circle Symposium would be a discussion on how they are made, the logistics and the possibilities of who makes them. Actually, the majority of "Croppies", as they are known, simply believe that (most) crop circles are made by some sort of non-human being. For the most part, they don't seem to worry too much about the specific nature of that being. That is, it doesn't matter whether it's a god, an earth spirit, an extraterrestrial, or whatever. They are referred to simply as the "Circle Makers" and it is understood that they are a force of "good", however that might be understood. The caveat "most" is used, because apparently not only can a Croppie see the difference in technique between a "real" circle and a man-made circle, but they can also feel an energy difference between the two.For our part, neither of us are very "energy sensitive" and since we only saw 3 crop circles, all apparently "real", we had no point of comparison for the technique. However, it really doesn't matter to us whether they are made by college kids as fraternity stunts or by benevolent, extraterrestrial Circle Makers. The fact is that they are cool. They are basically land art; beautiful works of art drawn in the landscape. From what we hear, about 80% of the farmers are ambivalent about the circles. They put out a small honesty box and get donations to make up for the lost crops. About 10% are actually excited about them and consider it an honor to have them on their land, and the final 10% are infuriated by them, considering them "pure vandalism". We have no way of verifying these numbers. Personally, we met two ambivalent farmers with honesty boxes and 1 infuriated farmer who kicked us off his land for trespassing and couldn't think of anything worse than accepting money from tourists for destruction of his property for their enjoyment.
Most of these pictures were also lost with the laptops, but it doesn't much matter, because crop circles are meant to be photographed from the air. At ground level, you can get nice pictures of bent wheat, but it's nearly impossible to see what the art looks like. Check out this website for a better view of some of the gorgeous crop circles found in the British landscape.
The Goddess Conference
The Goddess Conference is a yearly gathering of people, mostly women, but a few brave men as well, who honor the feminine spirit of the divine. Some of the people believe that there is a physical Goddess, rather than a God; some believe in the duality of Goddess and God who exist together (a typical Wiccan belief); while others are simply tired of the male-dominated society that grows out of a solely male divinity and choose to acknowledge the feminine essence in the natural world, regardless of its form.It was actually quite a good experience, though admittedly not quite as moving as the Druid Camp, which resonated at a deeper level for both of us. The best part of being involved in the Goddess Conference was volunteering as Melissas. The Melissas help run the conference and keep everything going smoothly. It gives a rare insight into the workings and also allowed us to develop a closer rapport with some of the people we met. There was another couple from the Druid Camp who were both Melissas at the Goddess Conference, which was fun for all of us. For more info check out the conference website. Oh! and our new favorite band Seize The Day played at the Goddess Conference. This was the second time we got to see them live, since they also played at the Druid Camp. Check out our letter on the band.
Our stay in Penzance and travels in Cornwall
The area of Cornwall, the most southern and western portion of England, has an enormous number of ancient stone monuments. We spent the better part of a week in Penzance exploring the areas treasures. Somehow we managed not to take very many pictures, but here's a small sampling.
| Lanyon Quoit monument. |
| From historical accounts, it used to be taller, so it probably fell and was re-erected. |
| The very suggestive Men-an-Tol monument. |
| Everyone likes this particular angle for photos. |
| Jeff for size comparison, I'd always thought the stones were bigger. |
| St. Michael's Mount just off the coast from Penzance. |
