Our 4th annual gathering saw us back at Smeaton Lakes outside Newark with attendance up again on the previous year. Many thanks to everyone for making the (long) weekend a great success - roll on next year (maybe with some more meets inbetween?)!! Thanks especially to our international guests with the USA represented for the second year running - this year by Chuck Wilkins from the USA & Bart Meijer, host at Be Back Later from the Netherlands. Please read on for an account from Trevor Halliday plus photo's from the event. Trevor: I arrived on the Thursday afternoon and found that a large number had already arrived. I erected my tent, emptied the car, planted a nice comfortable seat and table, opened a bottle of Adnams Bitter and then began to socialise. Strangely enough, that is all I seemed to do until I dropped the tent on Sunday. The weather was absolutely perfect for every minute of the stovie and lampie meet. Paul, whose tent was next to mine first of all complained that his knees were hurting. I assumed that was because of a lot of kneeling down, but it was because he got sunburn on them. The next day, I asked him if his knees were ok and he said they were, but now it was his neck that he had sunburnt, and so he went around the campsite with a very fetching scarf round his neck. All the usual people attended (see past meets) but some newcomers as well. I did not get the chance to get to know everyone as the time seemed to pass so quickly. However, let me introduce you to a major new participant - Woody! He proved himself over the weekend to be a wonderful stovie - i.e. he was able to hold his own (in all senses of the word) in a rowdy and sarcastic community for the entire weekend and think nothing of staying up until 4 am. Woody was a lantern Virgin until David S got hold of him and managed to make him take away one of his Vapalux lanterns - an absolute bargain! (photos Ross Mellows, Lonewolf, Keith Lakin, Trevor Halliday, Henry Pugh, Paul Hindley, Ian Marson) NB: The browsing 'lightbox' effect won't work until all the thumbnails have loaded.
