In spite of an exhausting 10-hour return journey from the
Scottish Highlands last Sunday, we were excited to be heading back on the road
to our first ever Skeg Vegas VW Show just 5 days later. In that time, we caught up on online orders and enquiries,
unpacked the van from holiday and re-packed it for business, caught up with family, made a
trophy for the show and shine and generally had a manic few days.
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| Loughborough Town Centre, Friday |
Bright and early (ish) on Friday, we embarked upon what
should have been a 3-hour trip to Revesby in Lincolnshire. Unfortunately, it became apparent when
directed to a dead end road in the middle of a wet and windswept Loughborough,
that the sat nav needed a map update.
Our tech savvy son took over and allegedly found a much quicker
route. This ended in disaster when we
took a short cut down the ominously named “Whale Bone Lane,” officially the
most pot holed road in Britain (trust us, we’ve travelled over a fair few of
them). I’ll spare you the details, but
the resulting flat tyre meant that we arrived on site at 5.30 pm – two and a
half hours later than the set-up deadline.
Thankfully, the staff seemed friendly and laid back and we did not seem
to be the only late arrivals.
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| Revesby Hall, Lincolnshire |
Our arrival was equally as dramatic as our journey. I literally stepped out of the van to
stretch my ailing back and was greeted by a flash of lightning and a clap of
thunder and it was back in the van to sit out the ensuing torrential
downpour. I must say, I found this all
very fitting given our surroundings. We
were in the grounds of Revesby Hall, which was built in the mid nineteenth
century in “Jacobethan” style (a fusion of Jacobean and Elizabethan styles of
architecture) near the site of an old Cistercian Monastery. It’s an incredible building and was the
childhood home of Sir Joseph Banks, the famous botanist, who travelled with
Captain Cook on his famous voyage of discovery to Australia. It is now in some state of disrepair but is
being gradually restored and unsurprisingly, given its long history, plays host
to numerous paranormal nights. The hall
was perfectly visible – flanked by trees – in the neighbouring field complete
with “Beware of the bull” signs.
Eventually, the rain (and hail) subsided and we were able to
set up without any further drama, unless you count the Monty Python knights,
who interrupted their hunt for the Holy Grail to try on our handmade steam punk
top hats for size!
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In search of the Holy Grail
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Knight on horseback does Steam Punk
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Old Ladies
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| Gumbys |
We rarely embrace
the fancy dress themes at shows – we’re time poor in the run-up to shows and
it’s not really practical to erect gazebos and hang up clothing whilst dressed
as a mermaid or Native American Indian.
However, by sheer coincidence, we realised that Caleb had inadvertently
embraced the theme and was in fact dressed as a lumberjack!
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| I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay |
We then headed for the entertainment tent
and whiled away a couple of hours listening to the covers band, who had an
interesting set list, including Electric Six’s “Gay Bar.”
Saturday brought it’s own challenge – high winds. These persisted for much of the day. By midday, word from the Skeg Vegas
merchandise stall was that a hurricane was about to hit Bedfordshire. This was disconcerting for two reasons. Firstly, the weather for our location
continued to show “light winds” which was clearly nonsense as I spent the best
part of 2 hours with one foot on our totem hat stand, arms outstretched,
holding onto the gazebos. Secondly, if the weather was already so far out, was the hurricane heading our way?
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| Sidewalk Carve Longboards - made to order |
We had agreed to display some beautiful, hand
crafted long boards for Sidewalk Carve Longboards on our stand and so Caleb was
tasked with ensuring they at least stayed upright and didn’t fly away across
the Lincolnshire flat lands, never to be seen again. We relied on passing trade and other stallholders to retrieve our
hats, caps and assorted bits and pieces taken by the wind.
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| Splitty |
Regardless of the adversity, we had a blast. The relaxed pace of trade meant that we were
able to take it in turns to have a wander, check out the stunning vehicle
displays...
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| Gertie Bob's gorgeous Bedford camper |
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| VW Brazilian |
...(including one of my favourites – Hayburner Vic’s Brazilian), chat to
old friends and new, witness a modified wheelie bin challenge, listen to music
and eat a little more leisurely than the usual bursts of mouth cramming.
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| Cool Flo's Ant, struggling to keep control of our rat bike |
We even managed to celebrate Cool Flo Ant’s
birthday on Saturday night.
In fact
Anthony modestly drew our attention to the fact that one of our weekend’s
highlights was that we got to see him!
Another unexpected bonus was the night sky; layer upon layer of stars –
a scene worthy of dark sky status.
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| Voodoo Street's winner |
Sunday gave us the weather respite we needed - wall-to-wall
sunshine, little in the way of breeze and brisk trade. Gaz awarded our trophy to this ratty T25 and
added our own rat bike to an impressive line-up of retro bicycles. People were still buying off us as we were
packing away and just as the last few boxes were being put into the van, we
were treated to a Spitfire fly by.
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Bicycle show 'n' shine
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| Lee and his partner in crime - nice cap! |
After saying our goodbyes, we headed back towards the
village of Old Somerby (the scene of our wheel change) to be reunited with our
broken wheel, having now managed to free up space for the damn thing. Again, a big thank-you to Sally. If you ever read this blog, we hope that you
are met with the same kindness you showed to us, in your hour of need.
The weather gave us one last kicking and the motorway driving conditions
were vile on the way home, so in a repeat of the previous Sunday’s experience, we arrived home
late, knackered but buzzing and once again ignored the fatigue, had a couple of
drinks and watched the late movie before hitting the sack.
