New Romney Country Fayre

Today Claire and I volunteered to person the Guide Dogs stand at the Fayre.

I took a picture before everything started to get busy and a few of the carnival parade.

The two hours we did seemed the fly by.

Arsenal vs Bayer Leverkusen - Friendly

The season has already started with Premier League clubs flying all over the globe to big up their international support despite moaning their players are tired....

Arsenal are no exception. Currently in the US playing pointless games against other Premier League sides just to sell $125 shirts (or jerseys as they call them) and other gear.

Then it's back to London to play games against Bayer Leverkusen and Olympique Lyonnais.

I decided after years of not bothering to attend pre-season games to go to the Leverkusen game.

Simply because it sees the return of Granit Xhaka that left a year ago to return to Germany, and chose Leverkusen. Last year they won the Bundesliga as Invincibles. 

Invincibles in Germany 2023/24 versus the only club to go a season without losing a single league game - Arsenal in 2003/04 for over 130 years in England.

It's August 7th. Helen and I will have our own Emirates Stadium seats. For this game being aged over 65 got me a concession ticket. Win. Win.

Oldham Athletic @ Aldershot - National League

Tickets went on sale today for Aldershot away on August 24th. 

Decided to indulge myself and make the trek over there again.

Last time went in the car and parked near the town centre. It was a bit of a dump. 

This time I expect to go on the bike and now have to start looking for somewhere to park.

Waterpump CL, Pub and Home!

The Welcome Board at Waterpump CL

Claire and her cider

Greene-King Hazy Day IPA

Stocks in the background for anyone not finishing their beer....

I sent this to the blog with email but it was too big for Blogger but Travellerspoint worked perfectly. 

There is a limit to the total size of the photos that can be attached when sending via email.

So to save re-typing it's here - https://devall-travels.travellerspoint.com/797/

The same with this one, a couple of photos and it was a NO....:  https://devall-travels.travellerspoint.com/799/

Monday. It must be Waterpump Day

0900

Today when I got up to take Reggie for his early morning perambulation there was a lot of activity. I am not an early morning person and so dog walks at 7.30am are a strain.

At least the boy was asleep all night and I was saved an evening earlier wander around the showground, doggy bag in hand...

Today the sounds are all of people packing up and getting ready to leave. Our closest neighbours went yesterday and another lot went just now. 

The latter were parked as instructed but with their T5 VW they had a tent/awning almost the same footprint alongside us. There was just enough room to walk through.

Once breakfasted there are very few jobs to be done before we leave. I have the EHU to disconnect and the silver screen to stash. Claire has to wash up.

Next stop Snape Maltings in Suffolk.

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We arrived at Snape and as before we go past the entrance and turnaround in the next parking area!

We end up in a different area of the parking between two trees. Access to the overflow car park is through a narrow gate and low hanging trees. So we turned around and parked on the way in.

Meeting Claire's sister Sally, then we set off for a walk around the site to the Malt café for lunch.

It started to drizzle so they went to look around some of the galleries and Reggie and I went for a walk around. As usual the camera came out. 

I moved the van before they came back to a better easier place to see and to get out of. After tea, where I spilled water everywhere, we parted company.

The TomTom Max took us a weird way back through lanes barely wider than the van. I have her measurements stored in the Max.

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Arrived at Waterpump CL around 4pm. Our pitch was marked using the blackboard as usual. There are three other vans here. Unusually two of them are also Elddis'.

Once levelled and EHU connected it was coffee and cake 🍰 time...

Now it's time to relax and maybe have a snooze.

Norfolk Motorhome and Campervan Show

We arrived at the Norfolk Showground at around 4pm. We hadn't had too much of a delay on the motorways up to the Dartford Tunnel. 

It took a while to get off the A2 onto the tunnel approach road. Not helped by a truck driver blocking the outside lane for over 640 yards to the merge point. Probably patted himself on the back. Sadly, just a wanker.

One on site we were directed by the excellent marshalls to our space on the green field.

The show didn't officially start until Friday but camping was available from 8am Thursday.  It looks that in the 8 hours before we arrived thousands took up the option to arrive. I'm not kidding. There are hundreds upon hundreds of motorhomes and campervans, plus wobble-box owners.

The theme for the weekend is Rock and Roll. There are two venues. One in the big top circus tent and the other one the events centre. Only the top of the bill eventually on Saturday evening has an additional cost.

The cost of the rally with EHU was £140 for four nights camping. It would be cheaper to not have EHU but we aren't that confident about our off-grid credentials!!

We have solar and we do have the small power bank.

Over the three days of the show itself we went into the show area a few times.  Friday and Saturday it was hovering around 28°C so not really dog weather, nor walking about in the sun weather for us senior citizens!!

We made a few purchases but nothing major.

We did buy the Flexi-Shades that attach to the front of the Fiamma roll out awning. They are in the photo stream below! They have a beading along the top that slides into a matching groove on the roll out. We bought two but with a 4m awning three might have given more coverage 

Today, Sunday,  we had a quick visit as we wanted to buy a fire extinguisher. But we couldn't find where we had seen them. It started off grey and overcast. Hurrah!

Then heated up to around 25°C! 

During the night the wind had got up. The Fiamma was out and also pegged and the windstraps deployed it was flapping and making a lot of noise. We were worried it might get damaged so at 6.20am we were out taking the Flexi-Shades off and rolling it in... As a result we got up late.

Over the course of the day people have begun to pack up and leave. Of course, the exhibitors began packing up and the show motorhomes and campers began to leave. 

We saw quite a few vans we liked the look of. We spoke to lots of other rallyists and day visitors. 

I guess if you have a blank sheet and a van of your choice you could choose exactly what you would want. Only a couple of the vans matched most of our needs. 

We leave tomorrow and head south. We have to be off site by noon. We have arranged to go to Snape Maltings again to meet Claire's sister for lunch etc. 

We are booked into the Caravan Club certificated location (CL) at Waterpump near Badingham in Suffolk tomorrow night. We then go straight home from there.

Would we do one of these show/events again? I think we would. 

Next time though we need to get a flag and a pole to run it up!

Photos taken across the weekend:

Flexi-Shades in place

Oddly is seems that the flag of the Confederate States is very popular. I have no idea why.