Over the weekend of the royal wedding, we had an opportunity to do just that. Four of our best friends came down to visit for the weekend and we decided to head up to the North Norfolk coast.

So, after sending Trevor out on hire on the Friday afternoon and enjoying an evening in the pub, on the Saturday morning we piled into Poppy (and a Ford Mondeo!) and set ourselves on course to Sheringham.

Despite a rather strong wind on the sea front, Sheringham was very pleasant and a great excuse to get fish and chips for lunch! We wandered around for an hour or so enjoying the town and generally having fun, before stocking up on food for tea and breakfast, which all got loaded into Poppy’s fridge.

Now at this stage we didn’t really know where we were going to camp. We had initially booked a spot at Kelling Heath and cancelled it, as we thought we weren’t going to make it up there (a long story!) and we knew everywhere would be busy, so we sat and had a think about it. One of our favourite campsites in North Norfolk is Breck Farm (www.breckfarm.co.uk), so we decided to try there as they usually have enough space to accomodate latecomers.

When we arrived we were not hopeful as it looked very busy, but we were told that there was enough space in the ‘top field’ and proceeded to find a little spot, nicely sheltered from the wind by a perimeter hedge. We slid Poppy’s runroof back, popped the kettle on and set up the two tents we’d taken with us.

The great thing about Breck Farm is that they allow open fires, so one of the first jobs was to head into the woods to find some firewood, followed by a game of frisbee for the boys whilst the girls relaxed and chatted in the sunshine.

As we got into the evening we fired up the BBQ, had an enjoyable tea, got the fire going and sat around chatting for hours, like you do when you’re with good friends.

When we decided to get some sleep we gave up the bed in Poppy, so that our friend Ruth who had just told us she is pregnant could have a comfortable night’s sleep.

The following morning Poppy provided us with a fantastic cooked breakfast using her built in two hob cooker and we packed up ready to head out on the broads. Having not pre-booked, we knew it would be a gamble finding a boat and it proved a challenge too far for us. We decided to head to the Bell pub at Salhouse instead and enjoyed a roast dinner, followed by a walk around Salhouse Broad and then Malthouse Broad.

All in all it was a fantastic weekend away with Poppy. Next up – the Alive and V-Dubbin show in Suffolk this coming weekend! Perhaps I’ll get round to blogging about that one a little quicker…

This year is the first year I’ve camped at VolksWorld. Poppy was packed up early on Friday morning and after a few basic checks and a top-up of oil, away we went towards Ipswich to meet our friends Nath and Abbie in their T4.

Here was the day’s first drama, when a minor leak whilst filling up with fuel threatened to stop us in our tracks before we really got going. Once we stopped panicking and with the problem sorted, we hit the road towards the show, via a ‘quick’ stop off at a breakers yard near Chelmsford to get a part (with the fun and games which followed, I can’t even remember what the part was!) for Abbie’s MK2 Golf.

With that collected, we jumped back in the vans and turned around ready to continue our journey. Or at least Poppy and I did. As Nath grabbed reverse in the T4 there was one of those noises you really don’t want to hear, followed by a complete lack of gears.

It took a mere 10 minutes to get the gear linkage off the van to find it was now in two pieces, rather than the more traditional one piece which has worked so effectively in the past! But we didn’t worry too much – we were outside a VW breakers after all…

Unfortunately amongst the significant pile of broken VW’s there was little in the way of T4 bits, but a quick call to another breakers yard 10 miles away brought us some success – they had the part we needed. So we all jumped in to Poppy and here started the magical mystery tour of Chelmsford!

Now this is where we started to think that the chances of getting the T4 to Volksworld on the Friday night were doomed! In the 15 minutes or so between our phone call and arriving at the yard, the Environment Agency had turned up and the gates were firmly closed in Nath’s face.

After unsuccessfully phoning around the obvious local places (TPS, GSF etc), we were just about ready to admit defeat. We hit the road to the local VW dealership in Chelmsford, with the vague hope that they might stock the part (after a 5 minute phone call to an automated system resulted in us only managing to speak to an answer phone!). The parts department guy scurried off with a hopeful look on his face, only to return a few moments later with the news we were expecting.

So back to the T4 we went. In the meantime Nath had arranged for a friend to go and fetch the required part from a breakers yard in Ipswich and called the AA out for recovery home.

From here, Poppy and I continued our journey alone (after a quick call to warn some friends who were meeting us there that we’d be a little late collecting them from a pub by Esher rail station!). The remainder of the journey went well, despite hitting rush-hour traffic at the Dartford Bridge and queuing for a while.

We arrived at Esher at around 7pm and picked up the two friends who were waiting for us, then headed in to the camping area and proceeded to put up Poppy’s new drive away awning in the dark, which is no easy task given how rubbish the instructions provided by Outwell are!

An hour or so later the awning was up, the beers were out and the BBQ was on. Nath and Abbie text around 10pm to say they’d finally made it back to Ipswich and by 9:30am the following morning they were on site with us, in a T4 which now had gears but wasn’t 100% happy finding all of them.

On to the show…

It was good. Very good. Anyone who has been before knows how many top quality show cars there are around, but the offerings from the clubs and small businesses were equally as impressive.

It did seem a little smaller this year and some of the traders seemed to be guilty of bumping up prices, but we had a great time looking around, catching up with some familiar faces and making a pretty long ‘if I win the lottery this weekend’ wish list.

My favourite of the show was the Cool Flo ’54 barn door. There is something about all of their buses which captures my imagination and this looked magnificent in the main show hall.

Saturday evening was fun and re-enforced the reasons why I love the VW scene so much – chilled out with friends around a camp site, BBQ’s cooking our tea and pretty much talking rubbish and having a laugh all evening. We did briefly check out the ‘Campers Party’, which we mainly used as a bit of an excuse to warm up in the bar.

Sunday bought with it more wandering around and looking at shiny, shiny air cooled VW’s, as well as catching up with a few more friends who had come down for the day. This was all followed up by a much less eventful trip back to Norfolk.

Some pics from the weekend.

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Bring on the next one…