Van love festival

Wednesday 16th July

Sue drove the Mac shack all the way to York on her own this time as Andy had family committements, his Grandson Riley had a 21st birthday Bar B Q on the Friday and Sue needed to leave on the Wednesday. Andy would get the train on Saturday, more on that later.

So we got the van road ready and set the sat nav up with two stops on the way, Peterborough and Doncaster and the small campsite that she would be staying at for the first night, Melbourne grange CS. ///dodging.entitles.allows

Andy followed her progress on Google maps as we share our locations with eachother and she made good progress up to the campsite and then the Mac shack refused to start when she wanted to drive to her pitch.

There was no power to the dashboard and starter motor. She phoned Andy who phoned the owners of the campsite to ask if anyone could take a look, the owner sent her son and husband out to help and they discovered that the cable had come away from the positive terminal on the battery. A quick tighten up and all was back to normal and Sue was able to park up and get the wine out.

Thursday 17th

The following day, Sue headed off to Elvington airfield where the Van Love Festival was being held. She joined the queue at the gates and was guided into the 'Party in the Pan' area where everyone was allowed to stay for the night until the festival opened properly in the morning, (Thursday), and sat with Chris and Marianne from Tread the globe drinking wine and chatting. 

There was a DJ playing music and a sausage eating competition (but nobody wants to see that!)

Friday 18th

Everyone joined the queue now to get their spot on the runway at Elvington hoping to be as close to the stage as possible. Sue managed to get park about 3 minutes walk to the stage which wasn't bad really.

Sue got the van parked and set up and had a wander, meeting some friends from previous festivals and in the evening went to the stage area and watched 'Ellie sax'.

Saturday 19th

Andy got the train to Broxbourne but missed the connecting train to Hertford east as the first train was late, due to the rain!!!

This meant that he had missed the connections to the remaining trains to Stevenage and York which he had booked a space for his ebike on.

So at Broxbourne he got the later train to Hertford east and then was advised to get to Peterborough and book the bike onto a train to York from there.

All of this faffing aroung made the three and a half hour journey around seven hours and when he eventually arrived at York station it was hammering it down and as he set off on the 40 minute bike ride to the festival it got worse.

He was travelling light and had only a shower proof jacket and shorts and trainers on so when he arrived he was saturated. Sue met him at the gates with his pass and once in the Mac shack he stripped off and stuck the diesel heater on to dry out.

Sue told him all about her three days without him and once dried and dressed we went for a walk to the stage area and got some Indian food.

We found a stand up comedian to watch and coming out of the tent we met 'Nooky' a friend that we had made at a military show that we had been to a couple of years ago. Nooky was one of the stars of the series 'Lads army' and 'Bad lads army'.

We had a chat with Nooky and then went and got a beer and got ready for the evening, a school disco and Sue got the school girl gear on and we went to watch Chris Moyles (Radio X DJ) which was brilliant.

We were dancing next to The Roaming Radfords who seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as we were.

Time for bed after a cracking evening.

Sunday 20th

We had a ride up and down the runway and chatted to a few vanners and Youtubers and then it was time to leave. We were all lined up in four rows along the runway and we set off, hooting horns and playing music. It was an experience not to be forgotten.

We will have to see what happens next year as we have heard that Van love won't be held at Elvington airfield again.