“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).

You see, I have been going to meets for as long as I can remember, as a junior member of the Caravan Club of South Africa (CCSA), that for some reason had chosen the most vile combination of yellow and dark green as their club colours (as can be seen modelled by myself in one of the photographs with this article). I will be trying to dig out some of these memories to bore you with too in the future but for now all you need to know is that I really wanted my daughter, Gemma, to experience something similar. 

I hoped beyond hope that the meet we were about to go to was going to deliver on just some of the expectations that I had, but for now I was just delighted that we had managed to programme in the right co-ordinates into the GPS, had hitched without a hitch, remembered to pack the child and were on our way. There was a definite chill in the air, in fact it was freezing!

At this point I was the one that started to worry as my caravanning days had been in a climate that was warm and predictable. Here I was planning
our first ever meet on a long weekend that by all predictions was to be, by far, the coldest of the year.
 
“Have you called them to make sure it is still on?” I asked, with a hint of panic in my voice. “If we are coming out then there are sure to be a couple more who will brave this weather” was his calm reply.
 
“But….But what if we get there and there is no-one there?” I continued.

“Then we can just turn around and come home” he said.

So I sat back and wondered what was in store for us newbies. We arrived quite late and were greeted by some very cold looking gentlemen. We explained that this was only the second time out in the caravan and our first ever meet and were warmly welcomed. They very carefully and cleverly parked us somewhere that required no reversing and then told us to pop over to the hall for tea and a hot-cross bun. There were not very many vans where we were parked so I was amazed at the number of people in the hall.

That has to have been one of the best weekends I have ever had, there was something to do every day and the evenings were filled with fun, laughter, dancing, drinking, eating and fantastic company. We made some fabulous friends that very weekend , and we felt completely welcomed by all. My daughter made a whole heap of friends who looked out for her from day one. It was the start of what I am sure is a very long and very inexpensive hobby. We now spend many a day planning when we can next get away with EEDA.

That weekend (Easter 2008) the snow fell in earnest. When we sent photographs of all the caravans in the snow to our non-caravan friends and people in SA they were shocked that we were nuts enough to brave it. At that point I realised that the DA was made up of a bunch of old people and wierdos and thank goodness for that!

Nicky Gardner