Dickers - man of the match!

How nice to be home!

The Caravan Channel's first attempt at an NEC exhibiton was really quite a lot of fun, but I'm glad its over. We had an amazing number of stand visitors (Giles reckoned around 1,000), and there were very few who didn't enjoy the show, I'm very pleased to say. One or two couples did come along who were complaining about odd camera angles and zooms . . . but they'd been watching old editions of Caravan Sights . . .

Dot, Giles and I spent the whole six days (Tuesday to Sunday) at the show, arriving on Monday early afternoon and departing today (Monday) at about 9.30am. We got the van back in the store yard by 1pm, and back home to start work on assembling Wednesday night's show.

Caz and Rob from the forum came up for an outing on Saturday and Sunday, while mod Dickers (Roy Dick) spent 5 days out of 6 on our stand! Roy, in fact, was a major factor in our stand's success - what a good bloke, and an asset to The Caravan Channel forum.

For people who know her, I'm delighted to say that Caz is doing better all the time, and has a new buggy, which is making life much better for both her and Rob. It does 8 miles an hour flat-out, and I'm just aching to have a go on it!

Will we do it again? Well, we'll certainly do smaller shows like Newark again, but I think those big NEC exhibitions are just slightly beyond what makes sense for us. In addition, having the stand actually reduces the amount of filming we can do - Dot and I usually manage to shoot two or three hours material, but this time we only just got two hours to work from.

The big shows are also not really what we do - if we had some sort of proper business operation behind us it might be different - but there's only me!

Busy, busy . . .

For no very good reason, I've felt as if I've been really busy this month. Is that an excuse for not blogging? Probably.

It hasn't been much busier than usual, really, except that we've had all the extra pressure of doing the show stand (Stand 5007, Hall 5, if you missed it) at the NEC, and with taking on a new caravan for a full season trial - more of that later. But when you're doing these kind of things, Sod's Law kicks in, and you discover the caravan insurance isn't right, you've got to sort out insurance for the show stand, there's an event you want to cover but can't, etc., etc.

But hey, it is nearly March, which means that it's nearly April, which means . . . etc . . that we'll be doing a lot more with the caravan - great!

Feb already!

The next big event in the Caravan Channels diary is the NEC National Boat, Caravan and Outdoor Show, where, for the first time, we'll be having a small stand.

It won't be a big thing from most of the other exhibitors (or visitors!) viewpoints, but for us, it'll be quite a big effort. There'll mainly be me, Dot and editor Giles Meehan on duty, and the excellent Roy Dick (Dickers from the forum) also plans to spend some time with us. I'm also hoping that Caz, our forum admin, is well enough to come along for a day.

If you're at the show, do come along to stand 5007 in Hall 5 - we'll be glad to see you!