Glastonbury Festival - the inside gen (Partners Evening)

Club members were delighted that President Callum happened to have been visited by friends of his (Colin and Carol Stanaway) whom he had been able to persuade into providing a Presentation as to the running of transportation at the Glastonbury Festival.  The Stanaways explained that following on from attendance at the Festival they had become involved in volunteering to assist with its running and were now actually paid to assist doing so.  It was clearly a major undertaking dealing with the organisation of all of the transportation.  However, whilst it involved long and very busy days during the actual days of the Festival there was a real 'friendly' feel to the Festival and a great deal of people happy simply to volunteer their services in order to ensure things went ahead as smoothly as possible and with the minimum of disruption for everyone.  Members learnt a great deal of interesting facts during the course of the evening.  A few of these being, (1) that the Festival isn't actually held in Glastonbury itself but in farmland which can only be accessed from the main road by way of single track country roads making the organisation of transportation extremely important; (2) during the Festival weekend there is an influx of some 210,000 people - more than the population of the City of Aberdeen!; and (3) a tourism benefit to the immediate surrounding area understood to run into tens of millions of pounds.

Also in attendance at the meeting was the Club's third RYLA candidate for 2026 - Ciara.  RYLA is an annual outward bound Camp (with separate camps for both boys and girls) run by Rotary, at a Centre situated in Nethy Bridge, designed to afford boys and girls the opportunity to learn bonding and leadership skills whilst participating in various activities such as mountain biking, rock climbing, gorge walking, raft building, etc. and to receive useful and informative talks from a number of guest speakers who have been successful in business.  All three candidates will attend a club meeting later in the year when they will be able to advise of their experiences during camp.  To date, all previous candidates have been extremely enthusiastic as to their experiences and have described them as 'life changing'.