Thousands of people are going back to England’s Glastonbury Festival for the first time in three years, after the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to be canceled. The five-day music and performing arts event started up again on Wednesday.
Billie Eilish, Diana Ross, Kendrick Lamar, and Paul McCartney are among the 3,000 artists who will be performing at the 50th anniversary festival. At 80 years old, McCartney will be the oldest solo headliner at the festival when he plays this weekend.
Early Wednesday, people who were going to the festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset, southwest England, started lining up to get in. Many people had trouble getting to the site because the festival happened at the same time as Britain’s biggest rail strike in decades.
On Wednesday, only 60% of trains were expected to run, and more strikes were planned for Thursday and Saturday.
At London’s Paddington Station, hundreds of people waited with their bags to get on a train to the festival.
Camilla Seward, who is 26 years old, said that when the rail strikes were announced, she felt “absolute panic.”
“This is my very first real festival. The ticket was bought almost three years ago. She said, “I’ve been so worried about getting there that I haven’t thought about who I’m looking forward to seeing.”