Meet Report
18th to 20th July 2003 - Kenmore
Oh the joys of summer camping, long pleasant evenings to sit out in,
barbecues, happy smiling children. Quiet family friendly sites. What
could be better?
We had been warned that as a "GROUP" the site was only prepared to take
us on the basis that we understood the need to keep noise to a minimum
since it was a quiet family friendly site. Perhaps we should also have been
told to bring our cheque books since we were each stung for a massive
£11 per night, although it was pointed out that we could have made things
much cheaper for ourselves by doubling up - I'm not quite sure what they had
in mind? For our £11 we were directed to the side of a hill and a pitch more
suited to rolling Easter eggs down. Some of the campsite children were
already enjoying playing role pole down the hill. To avoid the inevitable
blood rush to our heads we managed to find a scrappy piece of ground beside
the football pitch and the road back from the onsite bar.
After a quiet night at the pub we returned to find our immediate
neighbours (also a "GROUP" still sitting out having a few drinks and enjoying
the pleasant evening.
1am - the alfresco drinking session was still going strong
2am - no change despite me going out to "have a word". By this time
Anne had already packed up her tent and was back in Edinburgh possibly setting
a new record for the shortest ever attendance on a camping meet? (Richard
Hartland still holds the hut meet record of 30 seconds)
3am - still no change, by this time a large dog was seen to be
roaming freely round the site
9.30am - no sign of our neighbours but after a quick word to the site
owner they had a rude awakening when the site owner ordered them off the site
in 15 mins and we got a full refund for Anne.
We crept off to try and do some hills...... Corbetts and Grahams were the
order of the day and a wee mountain bike trip for Fiona. As usual Gillian
likes to get her money's worth on her Scottish weekends and her day was
chosen with careful reference to what was not recommended by the guidebook.
In other words, if the book says not to do the route because it is too long,
arduous, lots of ascent and descent, rough, difficult terrain, preferably all
of these the effect is something similar to a bull and a red rag. So while
the rest of us had our half days and got back to sit in the sun quaffing
Lesley's wine and eyeing up our new neighbours and any other potential
evening rowdies, Gillian had a full day with interest.
Saturday night was much quieter although I did get woken up around 1am
to hear some loud very drunken voices saying something that sounded like
"so is that the cars there" "Yeah I got thrown off this site last year.
Just our luck to get stuck beside a bunch of old birds". Clearly our
reputation now preceded us.
Roll on winter and civilisation!