Let me set a little scene for you, it’s the late 1950s the country is finally recovering from the effects of the war and people have more leisure time than ever before. What does this mean for The Camping Club? Membership numbers were going up and DAs growing, for Essex DA this meant weekend meets averaging between 40 to 50 camping units and bank holidays numbers could reach into the hundred. OK the main camping season was shorter with the first meet being Easter and the last sometime towards the end of September, but remember most people camped in tents, a few arrived on site in a car, others on motor cycle combinations and the rest on pedal cycles and of course one or two came by train carrying their worldly goods for the weekend in back packs. Sites also didn’t open until 6.00 on a Friday evening and closed once the rain stopped on Sunday.

Ferry Boat Inn Meet

After owning a folding camper for the last six years (until very recently), we watched the weather reports very closely when going away for the weekend, worrying about packing away the camper wet as it's difficult to dry out the camper at home. So much so that last year we only managed to get out with the DA four times.

Well, old habits die hard and even though we were now in our caravan we were still watching the weather like a hawk, hoping it wouldn't be wet. But why were we worrying? It didn't matter if it was wet when we packed away at the end of the weekend. We can just throw the awning over the washing line when we got home and let it dry in it's own time.

“What if they are a bunch of weirdo’s and old people?” was the question that I was asked several times that week, but as we hitched up our caravan that day with the forecast of blizzard style snow for the long weekend I thought that there were none quite as weird as us. I had spent weeks telling him of the wonderful memories that I have, when as a child my parents would take us away in the ‘van’ almost every other weekend. I had bored him to death with the tales of meeting my friends and the wonderful times that we had at rallies(meets).

4th - 6th Sep

We all arrived at Bassetts Farm on Friday evening to be met by Doug and Wendy who had kindly offered to open the site for Lee and Kate - a cunning ploy on Lee’s part so he didn’t have to do any actual Stewarding, surely not?! We all sat outside Duncan and Mo’s van (new members from France?!) chatting and putting the world to rights until quite late.