Gorgeous Cheddar Gathering

The Spring Gathering of UKAirstreamers in Cheddar was a very happy event. We are only now getting the chance to write and post pics because we used up our monthly internet bandwidth in the lead up to it and have been out of touch since. Such is the nomad's lot, dependent on mobile broadband.

Firstly, thank you so much to those who made it to Cheddar. It was, as always, a joy to watch you all arrive and to see you all circled in glorious, silveryness. For reasons that are far too tedious to go into here, we had delays in confirming the arrangements and that meant that some old friends had previous commitments. You were missed, but we are looking forward to seeing you in September.


We arrived a day early so that we could be there to welcome everyone. It was our first journey since November. After six months in one place the process of packing up and travelling with the trailer felt almost new again, with the flutter of nervousness that goes with wondering if you've forgotten to batten, check and switch on, off or over. There were some fairly narrow roads through the Somerset villages on the way to Cheddar so the pace was steady. And when we arrived we set up and enjoyed having an enormous field all to ourselves. We got out the Moon Chairs, cracked open a couple of bottles of the local beer and watched the sun set in eager but chilled-out anticipation of the next day's arrivals.





On the Friday it was exciting to welcome the arrival of each trailer, watching them glint and trundle steadily across the field towards us. In the end we had eight Airstreams, with the agreeable mix of familiar and new faces that we like so much. All but one of the trailers were new European models. Glynis and Pete were flying the flag for vintage in their 1964 Bambi II. Come on you vintage Airstreamers! We are looking forward to seeing more of you in September. We love the new models, we bought one after all, but the oldies have such individual character and heaps of history.




We pitched ourselves in a circle, nose to tail and enjoyed being a little Airstream village for a few days. The sun shone every day and the weekend was very relaxed with lots of chatting, a bit of sunbathing and some sharing of shady awnings. We caught up with old friends and made new ones. The cameras were out, niggles, annoyances and modifications were compared. Some Airstreamers whose trailers were not ready for the trip came without for the day on Saturday, and we all mucked in with the barbecue in the evening.

Thanks again for turning up, for sharing stories, experience, tools, barbecues, fire pits, and most importantly, camaraderie and laughs.

T