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!