Man cycles to Glastonbury Festival – from Spain

For most of us, getting to Glastonbury Festival usually involves a choice between gridlock traffic in a car, a crowded coach or a ram-packed train. But 25-year-old Ollie White has avoided all three by deciding to cycle – from Madrid in Spain. Over the course of nearly a month he has crossed "desert-like landscapes, a mountain range and hundreds of kilometres of coastline", and has documented every day in TikTok and Instagram videos edited in his tent. "A lot of people think I'm crazy for doing this but for me it doesn't seem too crazy," he told the BBC. "It's just a challenge I've set myself and, at the end of the day, once you've done all the preparation, you just have to get on the bike each day and do the kilometres," he said. Having spent the past three years living in Spain and working as a content creator for La Liga, the highest level of Spanish football, Mr White's journey to Glastonbury is part of a longer adventure home to Sligo on Ireland's west coast. Having walked part of the Camino de Santiago in 2024 to reach a festival in Bilbao, Mr White said the decision to take the long route had been as simple as "I have a ticket for Glastonbury, so why not cycle?" "It's been absolutely incredible to be honest, everything has been really positive," he said, adding that most of his journey had been focused on taking in nature having spent three years living in cities. In addition to covering up to 100km each day, Mr White has filmed and uploaded daily videos documenting his journey online, amassing tens of thousands of views. "As much as I love football, travel and adventure is really the thing I'm most passionate about, so it's been really nice to take the skills I developed in my day job over the past two years and put all that energy into this new style of video," he said. "Sometimes I'm in my tent in the middle of a forest while camping and I'm trying to put the videos together and add the subtitles, stuff like that, so it is challenging," he added. "Hopefully it'll be worth it in the end and, if anything, I just have the memories of this trip for the rest of my life." As for the festival itself, Mr White said he was most looking forward to catching Neil Young, Loyle Carner, Kneecap and Caribou, as well as acts from his childhood such as Scissor Sisters and Kaiser Chiefs. "In terms of the headliners, Neil Young will be the one I'm looking forward to most... when I'm cycling through lovely fields and desert-like landscapes he's been a really good soundtrack." After more than three weeks of cycling through Spain and France, Mr White crossed from Roscoff to Plymouth by ferry on Sunday and is planning to touch down in Glastonbury by Tuesday. "It's just one pedal after the other and hope for the best – that's served me well so far," he said. Follow BBC Somerset onFacebookandX. Send your story ideas to us on email or viaWhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.