Crap Days Out. Gareth Rubin
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bike horn. All in a room no bigger than half a tennis court. No staff except one miserable and rude woman doing both tickets and shop. Took my dino mad son who asked if we could go somewhere else after five minutes.’ AMW
‘I’d rather go the dentist than back to this place. Styles itself as Britain’s Premier Dinosaur Museum. It’s not even the premier dinosaur museum in its street.’ Harbottle
‘I paid £17 for three of us to go into someone’s house and look at plastic toys nailed to the wall, and put our hands in a box with feathers in it. I could have done that at home.’ CC Speakman
‘We were out in minutes.’ Helen
‘Can’t think what they are spending the money on. Certainly not on air-conditioning. The upstairs rooms were like a sauna, despite it being a cold, wet day. One of the most memorably bad exhibits was a plastic box on which was written the question “T. Rex is viewed as the king of the dinosaurs. Which animal is today’s equivalent?” Inside was a plastic lion, with a leg missing, nailed to the floor of the box.’ WorthingTruthSeeker
‘When we asked what their refund policy was having been round it twice in about eight minutes the woman at the counter looked like she’d seen the ghost of a severely hacked off T-Rex.’ Scatman
‘“Interactive” means you can poke some more holes in the paper models. Avoid it. If you don’t believe me, stand outside and look at the faces of people coming out before you make a decision.’ Idratherbesleeping
‘You would be better served burning a £20 note which would be wildly more entertaining and much better value for money.’ Bidsky
COOPERS HILL CHEESE ROLLING
GLOUCESTERSHIRE
It’s hard to say just why Gloucestershire is the world centre for rolling big cheeses down hills, but the world centre for rolling big cheeses it is. It may sound like a surreal 1960s TV series – young men screaming in terror as they are chased by giant Double Gloucesters – but it has been going on for an oddly long time. And the injuries have stacked up.
Oddly, the master of ceremonies at the rolling wears a top hat and white coat which make him look like a cross between a cheese salesman and an undertaker. He could be the one who sold you that cheese in Tesco today and you have to wonder what he secretly did to the cheese while it was out of your sight before he handed it over to you with a big grin.
In 1998 the event was cancelled because the year before there had been 33 recorded injuries. But don’t worry, it was quickly reinstated. As one furious local resident said: ‘This is the nanny state gone mad. If you can’t hurl yourself down a steep hill after a few drinks chasing cheeses, what’s the point in being British?’ It’s hard to known if he was being ironic.
On the bright side, the cheese rolling can be a useful aid for schools wanting to illustrate how natural selection works.
GLASTONBURY TOR
SOMERSET
Glastonbury Tor in Somerset is the centre of a magical realm where ley lines meet and the powers of the ancient earth goddess … oh hang on, that’s all bollocks.
While many destinations featured in this book rest their appeal on some pretty spurious grounds, Glastonbury Tor pulls the crowds based on the fact that it is the last resting place of King Arthur – and it’s magic. Actually magic.
The Tor is a hill outside Glastonbury village, at the top of which is St Michael’s tower, a small building without a roof that, while quite nice, is still just a small building without a roof. People in shanty towns throughout the world have these and few find the time to boast about them.
GLASTONBURY SYMPOSIUM
SOMERSET
An annual event dedicated to deciding whether crop circles are the product of super-intelligent aliens who have nothing better to do than nip over here and mark shapes in wheat… or of bored students who think it will be a bit of a laugh. Every year attendees come from all over the world to discuss this. We can tell you now, the aliens theory isn’t looking too strong.
THE GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL
SOMERSET
The hippy movement born in 1960s California was never going to translate wholly effectively to Britain, where the carefree spirit of sunny San Francisco was dampened – both metaphorically and literally – by this country’s ever-present rain.
And nowhere is this clearer than at Britain’s answer to Woodstock: the Glastonbury Festival, the biggest greenfield music festival in the world and where when it rains, it pours.
Like a message direct from God about the sins of free love and wearing tie-died T-shirts, Glastonbury rain is unceasing, remorseless, build-yourself-an-ark-and-start-gathering-animals type rain. And where rain leads, mud follows. In 1997, the muddiest festival year to date, torrential rain both during and preceding the festival turned the event into a scene resembling the Somme, only without the Red Cross packages or letters of encouragement from home. And with much worse food.
The other chief difference between Glastonbury and The Somme was that at least in the First World War you knew who the enemy was. At Glastonbury, the enemy is in your midst. He is from Liverpool, he is wearing a tracksuit, and he is stealing things from your tent while you are off cheering Muse.
By 2002, the festival had an average attendance of 250,000 despite ticket sales of 100,000; even a hippy can do that maths. So the site owner, festival organiser and God lookalike Michael Eavis called in Mean Fiddler to sort things out.
As well as the deployment of a team of jobbing bouncers, the company’s surprisingly obvious solution to the security problem was to put up a massive fence. This means that even though it might not have the First World War mud of previous years, it does at least offer the chance to meet an untimely death caught in a web of barbed wire.
As well as clearing off the scallies, however, the security crackdown has also cleared off the aged hippies, bearded magic mushroom sellers and other eccentrics that made the festival what it was; as well as all the young people. The crowd at Glastonbury these days is full of thirtysomethings bringing luxury camper vans and gazebos, folding chairs and yurts. People bring their kids, drink rose wine from a box and there is a long queue at the stall charging £8 for a ‘gourmet’ pie. It makes you nostalgic for the days when you could open a warm Stella, buy a fiver’s worth of hash from a crusty and try to dance to some Dutch techno.
Now ticket-holders are required to show their passport to enter. This means that entering the festival is much like entering the country – you pay a lot of money for a ticket, present your passport and enter, only to find that it’s a small rainy place where everyone has a tiny home and hardly anyone is working.
Sadly there will be no festival in 2012, with Michael Eavis blaming it on there not being enough police available for everyone to have a really good time.
CERNE ABBAS GIANT
DORSET
UFFINGTON WHITE HORSE
OXFORDSHIRE
It’s an odd idea: come to visit something you can’t actually see unless you are 130ft tall. Is anyone that tall? We’re not; not even combined. So unless you are on the world’s highest and most precarious pair of stilts, clinging