This years Birty Dastards main event was their 10th Anniversary celebration. The weather was surprisingly good seeing we were expecting some rain – we always expect rain!

It being an Anniversary year the event was opened up to other clubs with additional food stalls and musical entertainment provided.

There were no major incidents thankfully; the truck that was on the verge of rolling over was stabilised and brought back down onto four wheels and the people that got stuck in the ‘sheep-dip’ were all laughed at and then winched out.

Although punches are put out on the site they are only used for people to try out different areas and to give a goal to reach. Most of the time they provide entertainment for the people stood around giving friendly advice / abuse 😉

Going to the same sites every year doesn’t really allow for a large variety of images. I tried to add the perspective of the slopes to the images this year but I think next years events I will try a different photographic tactic (unless it rains!). I have found that travelling around in one truck tends to mean that I focus on that truck. Walking the site instead of being driven may mean that I get to be in areas I may not normally find myself in.

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So September was time again for the annual trip to Cheapfest – I know this blogs a little late! ;).  The Friday turned out to be good weather for putting out the punches, the night however was horrendous rain, turning parts of the site to a muddy mess.

Cows were the main feature of the first day of the event, 35 of them in fact.  They had pushed through a fence and invaded the site breaking apart into small groups.  Messages came over the CB of calls for help to locate and round them up.  It was not an easy task on a 500 acre site!

For the first time in a while there was a night drive up to the trig point and a small but impressive fireworks display.  Rich lead the convoy of cars to the point. However, he didn’t lead back since he got lost. He won’t be allowed to forget that in a while!

Although the days away are all about trucks when the men are stood around chatting about the best lines, through the trees my attentions falls to the forest itself – not to say that they are boring me…honest! ;).  There are not generally any animals on the trails however this year we had to watch out for piglets! They had dug out of there pen and no one could catch them, not exactly natural wildlife but very cute.

An eventful trip – looking forward to seeing what Cheapfest 2014 brings!

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I was putting my foot down this time…‘The tent’s just not big enough, we need more space!’ As I’ve mentioned before, camping is not high on my list of favourite things and I have decided space is one of the problems.  So we headed off to Go Outdoors to get a new tent. It’s so much better – about a third bigger than the last one, you can stand up in it and it has carpet to put down! The result? A much happier me! All it needs now is central heating 😉

For the off-roading trip this time around, we were off to West Harptree, a new site we had never been to.  From the top of the site it looked quite flat but once down over the dip, there were loads of places for the trucks to play.  I normally walk around a lot of the site but this one was a little too steep and rocky, so I had to get a lot of lifts. It was nice to go to a new area with new challenges and the guys think there is a lot more to explore next time.

We did unfortunately have a few breakdowns and one tip over, something I have never seen before but it was very slow so no injuries, just a lot of muddy water in what was a fairly clean truck!

It was a great weekend and nice to get out into the countryside. The tent was that nice that I might even venture off for the odd weekend camping! 😉

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