Testing, testing!

The Kielder Spring starcamp straddled February and March and was to be the first starcamp of the year but someone had other ideas. Galloway decided to hold their spring event the weekend before Kielder, fantastic for us as it meant leaving Thursday for Galloway and returning Sunday then leaving Tuesday for Kielder. Plenty of opportunity for testing clothing and footwear in the cold of winter.
Just shows how upside down the weather is at the moment, gale force winds and driving rain featured nightly with lovely calm warm days for sightseeing. On the way home from Galloway we were calling in at the campsite at Kielder to see what conditions were like. The forecasts on the Saturday for Sunday morning onwards weren't very encouraging so with this in mind we left the campsite early to head through the New Galloway Forest avoiding the A75 which was littered with contraflow roadworks. Flooding became a problem only after we passed through Gretna Green and on to the road to Newcastleton through Langhome. Streams and becks were bursting their banks and flooding fields and roads as the rain came down in squalls as we approached Kielder. The campsite was the worst we had seen it with all the electric camping pitches unusable and quite a few under water. The boss took lots of pictures and as we made our way home to possibly send the dreaded cancellation email out the rain died off and the sun started breaking through the clouds. By the time we arrived home the sun was shining brightly but we still had to contact the other organisers to decide what would happen. Tell everyone on the electric side what its like and give them the option of a refund was the path taken. To our surprise most people said "we know what it can be like so we are coming anyway" so the game was afoot!
Tuesday morning came and it was a lovely sunny day for our drive up to Kielder. On arriving at the campsite we noticed the flooding had abated somewhat and there were a few hardy soles set up already. After unloading the car we had a tour of the paddy fields and it wasn't as bad as we thought it would be, still no electric tent pitches but we could put more hard standing hookups out.
The weather seemed to copy Galloway with nice sunny warm days and driving rain with the associated clouds at night. Nighttime temps never really dropped into the minus figures we had hoped for although we did have a couple of frosty mornings.
So two starcamps attended and no proper winter weather to test out new kit, we only have one more starcamp at Tan Hill in April this season. It would be nice to have the weather conditions we need but the end of April is cutting it a bit fine, but you cant count on the weather doing what it is supposed to do.