DANNY ROBINS' INDIE TRAVEL GUIDE: GLASTONBURY

We kicked off a new strand in our Indie travel Guide last week - Around the World in 80 Festivals, of course there's only one festival worth talking about this weekend. So, here's a guide to some of the lesser known, more unusual attractions on offer at Glasto this year. Yep, forget the main stage, in fact forget all the music stages, you know who's on there - this is all about some of the quirkier things you should try and stumble across over the weekend.

Looks like it's going to be sunny for once, so you can really have a good wander round lots of fields instead of sitting in your tent shivering and desperately praying for the rain to stop. The festival website very nicely suggests taking a 'tapas approach' -don't just find one zone you like and stick with it, get around and sample little bits of as many as possible.

Spectacular Sights

Cubehenge looks truly spectacular - a Stonehenge inspired installation of lights blocks that move to the beat of music. But it's not the only large scale artwork that's going to be causing a stir... 5 words for you - flying tube train on fire.

Oh yes. This is the new large scale artwork by Block 9. They are the 'radical set- designing collective' who created the NYC Downlow - a full size recreation of a New York tenement block that's been running the last few years. That's running again this year, but their new set sounds quite spectacular. There's only a sketch of it on the website so we need to see some photos to see if they pull it off, but they are talking about a sinister decaying tower block with a burning London Underground train bursting out of the top. Sounds pretty amazing - it's going to be a party zone with different people curating different nights, kicking off with plenty of dub step from Black Market Records on Friday.

The Crystal Maze of Glasto...

Glastonbury's a bit like The Crystal Maze now with all these different themed zones. One rival to Block 9 are The Mutoid Waste Company who have been doing stuff at Glasto for a few years now. This year they're running The Unfair Ground. It's like a twisted apocalyptic Mad Max-style fairground. The main attraction is The Hellcopter - a Royal Navy chopper that's been 'crossed with a praying mantis' and become a secret 'nightclub of your wildest nightmares'. There's also a Joker's Sideshow Alley which features an exhibit known as The Acid House hosted by Bez from the Happy Mondays (be interesting to see if he stays at his post the whole weekend). There's also Arcadia, which grew out of Trash City. The daddy of them all though is Shangri La. If the festival is like a town, this is its biggest suburb.

Shangri La

So much thought goes into this project. I think they've been hard at work building it for about a fortnight. It's laid out like a retro-futuristic metropolis, inspired by stuff like Blade Runner and Star Wars. Last year it was described as "a dystopian vision of a pleasure-city ruled by a corrupt power dedicated to enforcing its vision of perfect 24hr pleasure."

This year apparently the city's been taken over by rebel pleasure givers from all over the universe and there's just loads and loads of mini happenings or 'Nanos' going on all over the place, things like: Raveoke - croon to your 'back in the day' rave favourites; Temple of the Blessed Bono where you can cleanse your soul by prostrating yourself at a Bono-based altar; and Microrave where you can be part of a live action computer game.

The main focal point of everything though is The Hub, a 'town square' that hosts games featuring hundreds of players and spectators during the day and a big rave up at night. It all looks great. Check out the trailer on the website. They're encouraging people to get dressed up to go down there. The memo says "Think of yourself as an extra on the set of 'Blade Runner' that's fallen into a vat of glitter..." - nice!

If that all sounds too hectic...

If Bez gurning at you to a mad dubstep soundtrack is a bit unsettling there's plenty for people who fancy a bit of sedate niceness. Culture vultures are well catered for this year.

There's the Pilton Palais Cinema Tent, which has a great line up of films. There's kids stuff during the day and then from 5pm they've got adult films (not like that). A few ones that caught my eye - Four Lions (Thurs 9pm) Kick Ass (Sat 12.30am) and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Sun 12.30am). They're also showing Avatar in 3D (Fri 3pm).

Glastonbury's also got it's very own mini-literary festival this year - The Free University of Glastonbury. This is based in The Park and is a tent hosting lots of talks by writers, often with a musical bent. The highlight for me is John Niven, author of the excellent A&R serial killer novel Kill Your Friends, reading from his new book The Amateurs. That's on Saturday at 12.15pm, followed by Peter Hook from New Order in conversation.

Something for the kiddies...

They used to have one of Greenpeace's Rainbow Warriors in the Green Fields for kids to play on, but this year it was deemed dangerous and been replaced with the Cadmus Boat, a massive ship built out of recycled plastic in the design of a Venetian sailing ship. It's named after Cadmus, the legendary explorer who is meant to be the first person to have navigated from the Middle East to Europe. And, according to Michael Eavis, it's the sort of boat that could have brought Joseph of Arimathea to Glastonbury, which takes us into Da Vince Code territory.

And, of course, there's the Kidzfield, open from 9am till 7pm everyday. That's also the place to camp I was always told. Worth becoming a kids entertainer just to be allowed to go there. Best toilets too. If you're not a parent, become one.

And finally, a little bit of politics...

The Leftfield Tent is back. This is Glastonbury's 'pop and politics' tent and is very excitingly curated by Billy Bragg this year.

There are gigs in the evenings, including the Braggster himself, but during the day there is a Comedy Hour and Daily Debates, which look interesting. On Saturday at noon there's Beating The BNP with former footballer Leroy Rosenior representing 'Show Racism the Red Card', and Billy Bragg amongst others...

And on Sunday at noon there's 'Stop the Cuts - BBC 6music and Asian Network' with Bobby Friction from Radio 1 and the Asian Network and Tom Ravenscroft off of our very own 6 Music.

To keep up to date with all the different areas check out this page.

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