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“Most people who get close to Glastonbury seem to go mad, more or less. Sometimes with the higher madness which is wisdom; sometimes not. The professional scholars (with a few exceptions) get as unbalanced as anybody else; only they are cleverer at appearing to be sane.” Thus spake Geoffrey Ashe, surrendering his sanity to the mauve pages of Gandalf’s Garden in his 1969 appeal to the people to join “the enduring community of Avalon”. What follows is my own meander through the colourful years that shaped the modern Glastonbury phenomenon, both town and festival, and perhaps the wider world as well. It’s not an in-depth scholarly analysis but a sketch, a snapshot with only moderate resolution, intentionally not over-researched although I am fanatical about chronology.