The 140-tonne, fire-breathing crane: inside Glastonbury’s hottest attraction
Powered by chip fat, this enormous crane – rescued from Bristol docks – is about to become the festival’s dance hotspot. ‘We have no idea if it will work,’ say the duo behind it
‘The idea,” says Pip Rush, “is to take over the sky.” We’re standing on a 140-tonne crane, 30 metres above the Glastonbury festival site. Rush and his collaborator Bert Cole are sanguine as they take in the view, but I’m clutching the railings, summer breeze blowing through the jasmine of my freaking mind.
From its birth in 1975 until it was rendered obsolete by bigger kit, this crane lifted loads at Avonmouth Docks in Bristol. Rush and Cole bought it for an undisclosed sum, chopped it into two pieces, and trucked them 30 miles to Glastonbury. “It was quite a performance,” laughs Cole. “Police escort and everything. Then we had to put it together again.” He points out all the boltings and weldings, as well as the 10-metre-deep pilings that hold this beautifully incongruous monstrosity in place. Nice, though appreciating the workmanship is hardly a cure for my vertigo.