Avalon, the Tor, and the world's greatest music festival
Glastonbury is a small Somerset market town that punches spectacularly above its weight — claimed birthplace of Arthurian legend (Avalon, the Isle of Glass), site of one of England's oldest abbeys, host to the world-famous Glastonbury Festival, and England's New Age capital. The conical Glastonbury Tor, topped by a ruined St Michael's Tower, rises from the Somerset Levels and can be seen for miles, giving the town an unmistakable mystical quality regardless of what you believe.
Glastonbury Abbey was one of the wealthiest in medieval England and claimed to be the burial site of King Arthur and Guinevere — a claim conveniently 'discovered' in 1191 when the abbey needed funds after a fire. The Tor has been associated with the Celtic otherworld, the Holy Grail, and Avalon for centuries. In the 1970s, Glastonbury became a centre of New Age spirituality, crystals, and ley lines. Michael Eavis started the Glastonbury Festival on his Worthy Farm in 1970 (70p entry, free milk) — it is now the world's largest greenfield music festival.