Rain Greets Glastonbury Festival

Tens of thousands of people flocked to Glastonbury for the world's biggest green field arts and music festival on Thursday and with rain falling and more forecast to come mud-lovers might not be disappointed.

The festival is notorious for its torrential rain after three 'washout' years in 1997, 1998 and 2005 in which the entire festival site on Michael Eavis's Worthy Farm, deep in southwest England, became a slippery quagmire. Some fans revel in the mud.

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The big lure is the hot line-up of bands, including rock legends The Who, The Killers from Las Vegas, British sensation the Arctic Monkeys, and Canada's Arcade Fire, at a three-day event that has poetry, theatre, circus and comedy.

Eavis sees the rain as a challenge and after spending 100,000 pounds on improving drainage the 71-year-old bearded organiser said he was "almost looking forward to the rain, in order to see the pipes working..."