We spent a few days at the CAMC site in Bury, near Manchester. This is a nice site with a pub immediately outside the barrier and a cafe a couple of minutes walk down the hill. There’s a large grass area busy with people relaxing and walking dogs and nice walks along the river Irwell.
There’s also a train track at the rear of the campsite with steam trains running back and forth. It’s a nice well laid out and maintained site.
We attended the Druridge Bay Festival for the first time. This is located in Drudridge Bay Country Park in Northumberland. It’s a really nice location with good park ups, a lake and a nearby beach.
We arrived later in the evening and missed the first day’s events, so we caught up with some friend and enjoyed the events.
The event was well organised and well run and we plan on returning next year.
We left Calais, France in the morning and drove to Elvington airfield in York to attend Vanlove fest 2025. This is our third consecutive year at Vanlove and the scale of it keeps increasing with more than 1,200 vans on the runway. Queuing to get access to the pan was awful and the four queues were not taken in order. Vanlove can definitely do better than this! Parking on the runway was a similar experience with vans not taking in order of arrival. Thereafter we had a nice time. It was good to see Bobby, Marie and their dogs from One Life Truck It at Vanlovefest and hear Mark (Bobby’s dad) talk about their plans for the MAN 8X8 truck and how it will be used in the future. Sadly, Guy and Jo advised this is the last time Vanlove will be at Elvington airfield so we’ll wait to hear where the new location is and if this works with our commute from Europe enroute home at the end of our summer tour.
We’ve been following Marianne and Chris from Tread The Globe on YouTube for a long time and we attended the Dekafok charity event in Telford. This was a great event and we met lots of like minded lovely people. We then headed North, parking up at Southport CAMC and visited the Sir Anthony Gormley statues on Formby beach.
We are heading back early from our three week European tour to attend Vanlovefest 2024 at Elvington Airfiled in York. We started off this morning from the aire in Calais, France and arrived at Elvington in the glorious sunshine. This is our second trip to Vanlovefest and we have e a couple of friends attending this year too. We bought our MiRiders here last year so I’m looking forward to cycling past all of the vans on the runway – and we have Lola our Miniature Pinscher pup with us this year (on the back of Wendy’s MiRider).
On our way North after a week of touring, we stopped off at the CMC site at Barnard Castle. This is a nice tidy site and I look forward to returning.
We visited the CCC campsite at Borough Bridge. This is a nice quiet site on the banks of the river Ure. It is prone to flooding so the electrical hooks ups are raised and there are two large signs informing you of the flood alert warning. There were no alerts when we were there.
Heavy rain did cause water to collect on the pitches and roads.
This is a nice site. Outside the site is quite industrial and it is near the A1M.
We visited Knaresborough, Mother Shipton’s Cave (the oldest tourist attraction in England) and York whilst we were here.
We parked up at the Scarborough CCC for a few days. This is a really nice site, with good bus links if you want to leave the campervan.
We walked along the cliffs of the Cleveland Way into Scarborough and took a trip to Robin Hood’s Bay. This is worth visiting.
We had some starry nights and Wendy was able to try out her new Solo Stove (on top of a table of course, off the grass).
The Scalby Manor local pub/restaurant next to the campsite was good too.
We’ve embarked upon our European Tour starting from Glasgow, Scotland and heading to Lake Garda in Italy. We plan to drive through France, Belgium, Germany and Italy.
We plan to drive south through Germany along the Romantic Road (Romantische Strasse) before finally heading for Lake Garda in Italy.
In this episode 1 we travel from Folkestone on the Eurotunnel, then drive through France and Belgium arriving in Cologne, Germany.
We’d love to know what you think so feel free to comment.
This was our first trip to Vanlovefest at Elvington airfield. We absolutely loved it. Friendly people and very well run. Whilst we were there we tested MiRider bikes and bought two – so time to get healthy!
McNaughts On Tour 