BBC News, Somerset
BBCBusiness owners near Glastonbury Festival say they have been “crazy busy” ahead of this year’s event.
The festival gates opened at 08:00 BST, with around 200,000 people expected to descend on Worthy Farm over the next few days.
But although the site is around five miles (8km) away from the actual town of Glastonbury, people turn up in the wrong place “all the time”, locals say.
“You can see the look on their face thinking ‘we’re in the wrong place’, so you have to explain the bus to them. Sometimes I sell them a little pie and that makes them happy,” Jamie Lovell, manager at Stephen’s Butchers, added.
He said the shop had also been serving many festival-goers who had actually meant to be in the town in the days leading up to the event.
Mr Lovell added: “At the moment we get messages saying: ‘can I have 400 burgers for tomorrow?’ So we’re all running around.
“Sometimes I finish work and have a half in the pub, watching the people walk past. What’s not to love?”
Terry Dilliway, who runs a shop selling furniture on Glastonbury High Street and has attended the festival for 40 years, also said he had helped people enquiring about the location of the event.
“They’re a bit alarmed it’s five miles away, people have been here who can’t find it,” he said.
Mr Dilliway agreed the festival was “good for the town” as it raised its profile across the world.
“I spend a lot of time in India for business and even in India people know about it,” he added.
However, one chef said Glastonbury became a “ghost town” over the main weekend of the event, and her busiest time would be when she welcomed hungry punters on their way home from the festival on Monday.
“There’s always people looking a little bedraggled who just want something filling and probably with a vegetable in it,” Ayesha Kalaji, from restaurant Queen of Cups said.
Speaking about her first visit to the festival in 2024, she said: “It’s a really incredible place because you see so many different walks of society side by side.”
Paula Dobson, who owns bed-and-breakfast The Glastonbury Townhouse, said her business was full of people opting to “have a full night’s sleep and decent breakfast” away from the site.
“From Wednesday through to Monday, they can leave their cars here, get a decent breakfast and hot shower and take the bus to the site.
“I do an in-room breakfast for them, they love that. Some of them come in at 03:00 BST in the morning – they party hard and sleep late,” she said.
