Montford Bridge

At last we are off with the first rally of the tenth season: -What a weather forecast we had to go on!

Windy with Rain, Snow and Hail along with temperatures of –3 degrees. So what’s new we thought as memories of Pembridge and Matlock came to mind. We will just take the thermal PJ’s and the Oil filled Radiator. No problem. Wednesday arrived and we were off, after taking about two hours to load the car and hitch up the trailer, well it was the first weekend! The Car had been M.O.T’ed the trailer had been serviced and had gas struts fitted to the beds, no more heavy lifting! We were off.

We arrived on the site early afternoon after an uneventful journey, and we didn’t get held up on the M6 going around Birmingham, that’s a first for many years.

Contrary to a pre-rally rumour, the site wasn’t two inches under water but it was very wet from earlier rain. The River Severn was about two metres from the top of the bank.

We were greeted later in the afternoon by a small group of caravanners, returning from their day out, with; ‘we had a terrible night last night, it was so windy, the vans were shaking’. Happy Days!

Thursday was a ‘grey day’, light rain, just showers. We visited Ludlow for ‘old times sake’, back to the site for late lunch. Norm and Marge and Bob and Angela joined us later that day. We were expecting this to be a cold night but it turned out to be even better than the previous one.

 Friday was none stop, twenty three more units arrived between 10am and 6-30pm. Paul and Liz the site owners spent a couple of hours laying out a reinforced canvas roadway to ensure that we had no problems moving on and off the site if we had even more rain. We pressed on with the usual stewarding duties; greeting new arrivals, giving info, walking the increasing length of the field with each new arrival, Gerry offering tea or coffee, tripping hook ups back on, extending hook up cables, holding down the roofs whilst the frames were secured. By 7-30pm we were ready for the welcome respite that the Bicton Village Hall and its Bar offered, and the opportunity to talk with friends old and new. We didn’t need any rocking when we turned in!

 Saturday, 3.40am was it cold!!! I got up and switched on the heater, never done that before. When we got up, there had been a frost and the fire bucket was iced over but it soon warmed up in the spring sunshine. The day gave us a chance for a bit of relaxation, nothing much to do with only two new arrivals expected, A leisurely lunch and an afternoon nap, just like old times. The evening saw us back at the Village Hall.’ Hope your quiz isn’t going to be too highbrow this year’ was the cry! It wasn’t. It couldn’t have been Dave Jones was in the winning team!!! Then followed a new innovation, wow!

The Rally Meeting was held on the Saturday evening, including the raffle, well done Sue nice to see you winning prizes as usual. It was held last thing on Saturday, as we were not sure about what the weather would bring on Sunday morning, along with giving those members who needed to, the opportunity to leave early after breakfast. We needn’t have bothered the weather was even better on Sunday, blue skies and warm sunshine.

 What a wonderful weekend it turned out to be, much better than forecasted, though we did mention to Paul on Friday, after he and Liz had spent two hours laying the road, ‘that we wouldn’t be having any more rain now’!

If that was a weekend with a bad weather forecast we can’t wait for the ones with a good forecast.

Ray & Gerry