Thursday 29th
The Beamish "Dig for
Victory" event is fast becoming my favourite event of the year. For this
year, I attended for all four days, taking my first Jeep and arriving mid
morning to set up camp. One of the unique features about this event is the
freedom to drive around the site to different locations, showing the public the
vehicles in action and creating scenes and dioramas that are constantly changing
across each day. It also creates lots of interesting photo opportunities amongst
the period buildings. There were a good selection of vehicles on site already
and with it still being school holidays, there were lots of public about.
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Lynne was at work for all of Thursday, but she would call in and drop off
additional camping gear, then take my daughter and myself home to collect the
second Jeep. After a bite to eat, we took the '43 Ford to Beamish as it was
getting dusk. Lynne had more work to do and would join us later on Friday.
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Friday 30th
The main military vehicle camp
was located in the show field near Rowley Station due to the space available
here. The other main 1940's display area were the re-enactor displays located
around "Home Farm", which itself is set around the 1940's. Other areas
of the open air museum focus on different time periods and we were free to drive
to any except the 1800's area around Pockerley Manor and the Wagonway.
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Across Friday, little dioramas popped up and moved on at various locations
around the site. In addition to a number of Jeeps, there were several WC51/WC52
Dodges and GMCs, a Scammel, Tilly bikes and a Dodge Command Car. Lynne turned up
mid afternoon so we took both Jeeps out on a mini convoy for coffee at the pit
village.
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After the public left at closing time, we took the vehicles out again for photos
around town, without any non-period people in shot.
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Saturday 31st
Another visitor during the show
was a Universal Carrier. While it did go out around the site, it had a number of
engine cut outs while trying to reverse back in the parking spot. Each morning,
there was a briefing to start the day and advise any newcomers about the site
rules for driving. These particularly involved watching out for the public, who
don't think about road safety in the museum environment and also looking out for
trams and other museum vehicles which use the site all day. The briefing was
usually followed by a mass convoy around the whole site.
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There was space for a few vehicles to park outside of the Co-op, but there was a
half hour time limit to keep the displays changing. Having a four day show also
resulted in the vehicles on display changing due to some only attending one or
two days.
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On Saturday evening, a few of us set out on patrol, starting at the Pit Village.
We cleared enemy forces out of pit row before patrolling along the railway.
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We made several more trips around the site during Sunday, stopping off at a
number of different points for coffee and photos, as well as dropping one of the
tents and packing everything into the other one as the forecast had threatened
showers on and off across the weekend. Fortunately the rain stayed away. Towards
the end of day four, we dropped the second tent and brought the modern car into
the site to pack away the stuff that wouldn't fit in the Jeeps or trailer. We
took both Jeeps home, then came back in a normal car to collect the other car.
Four days of fresh was tiring but we'd all had a great time and plan to do
the full four days again next year.
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