Well, the Camp was a huge success – you can read peoples’ comments in the Oakleaf Campers Yahoo Group.
We had the usual disaster on the way there – this time our car engine blew up and we spent 36 hours stranded on a layby on the A66. It made a change from the wheel falling off, or the petrol tank springing a leak. At the same time, our mobile decided to die, so we couldn’t talk to anybody after the first few hours – we got in a call to Carol, and that was it. And we didn’t belong to any recovery organisation. Luckily, we had the fully-stocked caravan to pass the time in, but it wasn’t exactly fun. We read a lot, did crosswords, listened to the radio; I drew a lot of sheep (it was on the very top of Stainmore, which is a windwept, open treeless moorland that is pretty featureless apart from the sheep.) We both sat and watched an awful lot of traffic thundering by and waited for somebody from the Camp to come along with a tow. Eventually, on Friday morning, we decided that we just had to get to the Camp no matter what, and called a breakdown truck to haul us there. I won’t say how much it cost us, but we could have lived for a couple of weeks on what we handed over to the breakdown driver. We then had to go buy a new mobile phone and join the RAC (so that we could get pulled home for free after the Camp finished) – another couple of weeks money gone. Sigh.
But it was a good camp for everyone!
In the meantime, does anybody want a Vauxhall Cavalier with a busted big end and a brand-new petrol tank?