Camping Experiences at Odiham Fire Show

When I was working as a Health Care assistant on an elderly care ward at The Royal Surrey county hospital with two friends from the ward…Mandy and Sylvia used to camp at the annual Fire Fair at Odiham over the weekend to try and raise funds for the ward we worked on by running a tombola stall over the weekend

It was always a lot of fun and I have a lot of memories of people I will never forget. We used to collect prizes etc over the year and in the run-up to the weekend of the fair we used to ticket everything up.

Was collected on the Friday afternoon after work. Mandy used to show a vintage fire engine, so knew many people so it was like a community. They have a tent for me and I remember the first time I had the tent I felt every bump on the ground. But over the few years, I did this I learned the best way to keep warm.

Fridays nights were always good catching up with people that I hadn’t seen for a year. My first year I remember a meal at the pub then the beer tent into the small hours.

You always hope you did not need the loo in the middle of the night ….as you had to find a portaloo to use. Once I took the wrong turning and thought I had interrupted someone……so it was a “sorry mate”…..discovered the next morning that “mate” was a 6 ft inflatable fireman!

Sat morning you awoke to the sounds of people starting to begin the day, the smells of bacon sandwiches, etc being cooked. The best-fried egg sandwiches ever……two lightly fried eggs in white bread and butter…..set you up for the best part of the day …..till a bag of chips about 1 pm with a BBQ in the evening sitting around, drinking, talking, etc. I will never forget Sunday dinner on the BBQ …sat evening. Heaven.

We ran the tombola the Sat and the Sunday…..one very successful year we raised over £500 which we used on the ward to buy equipment that would help us in the care of our patients.

We worked hard on the tombola and played hard in the evenings…..but my main memories are of the lovely people who I met xxx Happy times