Were you lucky in the recent Sunday morning scramble for Glastonbury tickets? If this is your first ever Glastonbury, you probably joined a dozen groups on Facebook to get tips from festival veterans. Many questions are answered with one word – “monorail” – what’s with that!?
Let’s discuss.
Q – Hey how car is the coach from the XYZ campsite?
A – 3 stops along the monorail
Q – What time does music stop in South East Corner?
A – When the monorail goes by to pick you up
Q – What’s the best time to arrive?
A – The monorail gets busy around 11.
Does this sound familiar to you?
This is the legendary, but rather silly story of the monorail at Glastonbury.
Let’s begin.
It was an April Fool’s joke over on the E-festivals forums at least a decade ago, and it stuck.
That’s it.
Its just a meme that stuck with people and it has become a tedious comedic response to any “basic” question about attending the festival.
Here is the original page, published Thursday 1st April 2008.
The headline reads:
“Glastonbury Gets Green Transport Solution: Mini Monorail to Ease Mud Congestion”
As I’m sure you’re aware, you can read articles on April 1st without laughing at its absurdity and discarding it as “fake news”
This became a running joke on the forums and spilled over onto other platforms, like Facebook.
Isn’t there an actual railway track at Glastonbury Festival?
A disused railway track, yes. But there’s no sign of any rails, trains, platforms or tracks, sadly. It’s more of a road/footpath for cutting across the festival.
But that’s got nothing to do with the monorail.
So… the monorail doesn’t exist then?
Of course it does. It exists in people’s minds. And that’s enough.
On that note – that reminds me – I’ll actually be driving the monorail on Sunday morning at 6am starting at the stone circle… so…. see you there, I guess.
See also: What is TWFTPU at Glastonbury?
Have you heard the myth about the Glastonbury Monorail? It was installed in 2008 to “ease mud congestion” for festivalgoers…. or was it?
