The War & Peace Show - Part One

Oh the mud, the mud and the rain...

Actually, as we got down to Kent on the Wednesday I think we'd missed the worse of the weather, granted it was still raining and the site roads were an ocean of sticky brown porridge but we tightened our boot laces and got on with it, just as the hundreds of other reenactors and stall holders did. We found a clear spot in the woods and erected our pup tents. As we travelled down with a friend of ours who owns a BMW motorcycle and sidecar combination (I believe its a Chinese motorcycle which has been transformed into a pretty good facsimile of a WW2 BMW?) we were lucky enough to move most of our essential equipment such as tents etc with the assistance of this marvellous machine from the main car park to our base in the woods, after two days or so of battling through the quagmire our little warhorse looked rather authentic - for the Eastern front!

Thursday dawned with sunshine and the ground started to dry out, apparently the nearby River Medway draws most of the water from the site and as a result it tends to drain very quickly. Just as we were about to start enjoying ourselves the heavens opened again and down came the rain, smiles turned upside down and a 'Zero Vehicle Movement Order' was established to prevent any further deterioration to the already treacherous roads and tracks.

Undeterred, Chalk prepared their slit trench, even 'borrowing' a little straw for the bottom from our nearby German counterparts when they weren't looking! Then we hit the traders stalls (again) in search of bargains and old friends.

More to follow.

The chosen site for our tents, we were to share this area with slugs, snails, rodents, frogs and of course mosquitoes!

Home, Sweet Home. Not so much a place to live as a place to sleep. Even sitting up is impossible.

An old slit trench in need of some 'modernisation'.

Chalks' secret weapon; Andy with a spade and a mattock!

Our transport. A proper little warhorse!