Base Camp Journal - Off to Sunny Birmingham
What better place to take the Base Camp in the last week of October than sunny Birmingham? Robby chose this place because the NEC was hosting the 2023 Motorhome and Caravan Show, and he really wanted to go there. We installed Bertha at the Chapel Lane CMC site, just south of the city.
Storm Babet brought enough rain to flood towns and villages in the northern part of Britain. Very fortunately we were just outside the worst of it, though some fields between Worcester and Birmingham were already waterlogged, and others had become lakes where the rivers had overflown. The flooding still wasn't as bad as the one in 2007 (or was it 2008?), when entire regions of the countryside were under water, power stations were damaged and the Army was eventually mobilised because we weren't reliant on the civilian infrastructure to operate as an emergency service then.
Only half the pitches were occupied on the Chapel Lane CMC site, and it was dead quiet the whole time we were there. Robby believes the site's mainly used as a stop-over for people travelling between the south and other places much further north, because there really isn't much of interest worth visiting in the region.
Just around the corner from the site entrance is a transport museum, but that was closed. The gates were still open, with a few people doing maintainance work on a few vehicles, so we had a look around the yard. It appears that visitors can ride on the miniature railway and on the vintage buses that were parked outside the garages.
At the end of the road is Beckett's Farm, which has a cafe, restaurant, conference centre and farm shop. It appears to be where people living nearby congregate and do their shopping, because, again, there isn't much else nearby. The shop does have a very good range of chocolates - I bought several boxes for Robby and my mother. In the shop there are also many ingredients, sauces, flavourings and materials one doesn't find in the average store.
Roughly 1km from there is the White Swan pub, but one needs to get to the other side of the roundabout, and the constant stream of traffic makes it nearly impassable during the day.
Birmingham City
I can't say Birmingham is my favourite place, but I don't like most crowded places anyway. Other motorists drive like nutters, and there certainly isn't an etiquette at the roundabouts.
The city is very diverse. Not far from the station is a stylish China town, and next to that we passed a large, colourful gang of furries smoking outside a pub.
Leaving the shopping centre, we walked into what initially looked like a fairly large pro-palestinian rally, at the start of the high street. It turned out to be the head of a vast sea of protestors that filled the high street, making it extremely difficult to get from one side to the other. I've seen a lot of protests in my day, but none anywhere near as large as this.
What surprised me was the absence of any policing or crowd control. I saw around four coppers, none of them equipped with protective gear, and two police vans. Almost every other protest I've encountered had been organised and compliant with the authorities, to the point of being entirely ineffective. Maybe that's just how it's done in Wales.
It seems everyone has a strong opinion on the Israel-Gaza situation, but it's hard to see beyond the seemingly intractabe mess of ideology, decades of unresolved grievances and the pointless waste of civilian life on both sides. It's not helped by the biased reporting by the Corporate Media, which is never an objective or impartial source of information on divisive issues.
Why do so many people feel the need to take sides, here in the West, while remaining completely silent about the abject disregard for human rights, the persecution of Christians, the torture of dissidents, the imprisonment and execution of gay people, the horrific treatment of girls and women, and the ethnic cleansing that occurs pretty much everywhere in the Middle East outside Israel?
When we finally managed to leave the high street, we returned to the China town, where it's much quieter. The sun was low in the sky, giving the metallic surfaces of Birmingham Station a slightly golden look, and there was a chill in the air that was a taste of the cold winds to come in the winter.
Robby wanted something to eat, maybe a pub meal, if we could find a pub anywhere in the area. I noticed a building on a corner that looked like a restaurant. It was called 'The Ivy Lounge'. Robby wondered if it was owned by the same company that owns the Ivy Lounge in Cardiff, and pointed out the place might be expensive. I thought that place looked as good as any.
The Ivy Lounge is actually a Chinese restaurant, and very nicely decorated, with three of the walls being a light gray, and one being tiled by large mirrors. The entire ceiling was a light diffuser. The chairs and tables were like those of a high-end hotel restaurant.
The food was unlike anything I've come across in the Chinese restaurants I'd been to previously. It was far more refined than what we get from a Chinese takeaway.
Robby told me about LadyPool Road, which apparently is legendary for being the place where the Balti was invented or introduced to Britain. When we got there on evening, we barely managed to get the car through the street undamaged, as all the vehicles illegally parked on both sides - too many for a traffic warden to do anything about - had effectively turned it into a single-lane road. Finding a parking space was out of the question.
There is an excellent takeaway much further away from the city centre called 'Spice Nation' - I definitely recommend that place.
The 2023 Caravan and Motorhome Club Show
This is the event we travelled to Birmingham for, but I think Robby was far more excited about it than myself. He was going to buy yet another awning, and wanted to view several before deciding on one. We also wanted to have a look at the new Base Camp 2.
The NEC is a vast place. I'm guessing it was roughly a kilometre from one end of the show to the other, and it was far too crowded to take any decent pictures, unfortunately.
Businesses and salespeople had their stalls for things completely unrelated to travelling, and I ended up with a bottle of Beckford's 67% alcohol rum, because it really does taste like chocolate and coffee (with a kerosene-like aftertaste), and, given enough ice, I should be able to make Espresso Martini with it.
Obviously there were many caravans, motorhomes and smaller vehicles at the show. I wouldn't fancy a motorhome, as I really don't like driving anything with an automatic transmission, and especially vehicles that have a touchscreen for everything. I also haven't seen a motorhome with a lounge layout that I'd like.
Robby inspected a few awnings that might be suitable for Bertha. One of them was the poled version of the one we currently have - the problem with ours is the rain water collects in one area of the roof, and eventually seeps through. The other two awnings were sold by Camptech and Quest. Eventually Robby decided on the Quest-branded one.
We also ended up buying a Quest Supernova LED tube for the interior of the awning, just because it was fitted to the demonstration one. It could also be attached to the side of Bertha, for when we're sitting outside in the evenings drinking. The Quest Supernova can be very bright, but it's probably overkill, given its length and the fact it doesn't have different colour modes. I found the exact same product being sold under the Dometic brand elsewhere.
Swift had displayed a concept version of the Base Camp 2, which they call the 'Evo'. It has an air conditioning unit where the skylight usually is, a microwave takes the place of the oven, the gas bottle container has been replaced with a large electric power regulator/inverter, and, apparently, the solar power unit is several times more powerful (around 900 Watts). We're probably not the only ones who hardly ever use gas. And Swift are using a blue/gray colour scheme for it also.