I got up a 4:50 am. to be ready when Walter was to arrive at 5:30 am. At 5:40 am. Walter phoned to ask why I had not phone him ask him why he was late. Walter picked me up five minutes later and off we went to Tring to meet up with Henry and Paul. (We were only five minutes late thanks the RATO units on Walter’s car.)

From Henry’s house we headed down the A41 to the M25 and then onto the M3. As we are heading south on the M3, with Paul and Henry following along behind, I decided to have a look at the road map.

"Its alright," said Walter, "I know my way to Bournemouth."

So I put the map down. As we were approaching Southampton Walter said

"Ring Henry and tell him we’ll stop at Southampton services because I want a pee."

This message was duly passed on via that wonderful modern invention, the mobile phone. Having been quite close to Southampton we seemed to have gone quite a way without seeing Southampton services. It was then I noticed a sign post to Portsmouth.

"Correct me if I’m wrong," I said to Walter, "but isn’t Portsmouth in the opposite direction to Bournemouth?"

"I wondered why I kept seeing the sign for Brighton." He replied.

Once again I phone Henry and told him of the mistake, a mistake which neither Henry or Paul had noticed. We got as far as the junction for Fareham, which is about 10 miles or so down the road from Southampton. The journey back to Southampton didn’t take quite as long. Driven by the need to use the facilities, (and the RATO unit strapped to his car,) we made, shall we say, very good progress back to Southampton, (If there were any speed cameras working on that stretch of road I’m sure they would have been to slow to catch Walter.) After stopping at Southampton services the rest of the journey to Bovington was relatively uneventful.

When we arrived at the Tank Museum we found Richard and his brother Peter already there unpacking Richards books. After helping them out we carted our stuff into the museum and began to set it up. Our table was situated right next to a Sherman tank with Richard’s "Behind the Lines" stand opposite by a Cromwell tank. The unpacking and setting up nearly done, it was time for Walter to disappear only to reappear shortly with the first of his many carrier bags of goodies he would collect over the weekend. By the time Walter came back Henry had finished unpacking all his Soviet helicopters. There was a slight look of envy in Paul’s eye as Henry was unpacking them, especially when the enormous Mil Mi-6 Hook was unpacked.

With every thing set up and ready to go, I decided it was time for a wander around. The first thing that struck me was the way that all the stands were dotted around amongst the exhibits in the museum. This made it something like an adventure because you never knew quite where every thing was hidden; you would walk round behind the T-72 and find games going on you didn’t realize were there. In fact I still found stands on the second day I hadn’t seen on the first day.

There were some very good demonstration games on show. There was an Operation Sealion game set in the Romney/Hythe area; this had lots of interesting and unusual models on the table. One in particular caught my eye was a conversion of the German DFS 230 glider into the DFS 230B/FA rotor glider which is basically an unpowered auto-gyro. Moving on round the museum there were a lot of D-Day games, all of which were very good with some nice scenery but there just seemed to many of them covering the same subject for my liking. The majority of the game were WWII, that’s hardly surprising considering the popularity of the period. There were however a few other non WWII games apart from our own Russians in Afghanistan game. There were a couple of Vietnam games, one of which was using a version of Arty Conliffe’s Crossfire rules. I found a Russian Civil War game, An ACW game and there was even a Warhammer 40K game hidden round behind the Centurion, which has been split in two.

I got back to our table to see Henry and Paul doing an excellent job talking to the public and giving out handouts, (We got rid of about 200 handout and about 40-50 cards over the weekend.). Walter returned a short while later complete with a few more carrier bags. With Walter and I back on station this allowed Henry and Paul to go for a wander. We then proceeded to roll a few dice and move some of the figures around, (the Mujahadeen upset the Soviets by blowing up a couple of their lorries in a convoy.)

There were a good number of visitors to the show and not all of them wargamers, some had just come to look around the museum, and most found the wargames demonstration quite interesting. Nearly all the people who stop look at our game were heard to exclaim "God its huge!" or "What the hell is that?" or even "Was it really that big?" they were of course referring to Henry’s enormous model of the Mil Mi-6 "Hook".

After a while Paul returned to the sound of German marching music. He had another helicopter to his collection, (he obviously though Henry was getting to far ahead of him in the helicopter arms race.) I set off to get some food. On the way I bumped into Henry who was lost and wanted direction to get back to our table. On the way back I also saw Walter examining a 15mm Kursk game, apparently they were using a 1 to 1 figure scale. Another interesting game I saw had some very nice "Bocage" terrain, the crops in the fields looking very realistic and made out of the same material they make Teddy Bears out of. (Any children reading this who have lost a Teddy Bear recently, check daddies wargaming room.)

The museum exhibit were excellent, I especially liked the WWI display at the entrance it was almost like being there. The Tiger I looks impressive now its back in one piece. You only had to look at the Iraqi T55 to realize driving one was not a very safe career.

The museum closed on the first day a 5:00pm. So we traveled the 12 miles or so to Winterbourne Abbas and the Church View Guesthouse where we were booked in to stay the night. After a cup of coffee and a shower and a vain attempt to control the teletext on my TV from 150 miles away using a mobile phone, we all met back downstairs. We then made our way back to the Tank Museum for something to eat and the presentation of the prizes.

There were about £600 worth of prizes given out split between about 20 odd different categories. (There were some interesting ones like "Best use of a Pringles lid") We won a prize, and I can’t remember the exact wording of it but it went something like "The club who communicated with the public the best, especially children." The main Prize for the "Best game of the show" went to the Bognor Club for their Siege of Breslau game.

Dinner eaten, prize giving over, we made our way back to Winterbourne Abbas eventually. I say eventually because following Paul we made a few detours and went two or three times around the odd roundabout before arriving back at the guesthouse. After a trip down the local watering hole in the pouring rain, we finally went upstairs to bed.

The next morning after a quick shower it was downstairs for breakfast, (shades of John Cleese here, Morning Falwty, morning Major ..etc.) Also staying at the guesthouse were the lads from Old Crow. They make some very nice Sci-Fi buildings and futuristic ships and vehicles. After breakfast it was back to Bovington by yet another route. Walter and I found our own way there but got held up in Wool by a train at a level crossing.

Walter was soon off to get some more carrier bags (by this time he was trying to sneak them behind the table by coming around the back of the Sherman but we spotted him most of the time. Henry and I went for a walk round and had a look at the Siege of Breslau game which was hidden behind a great big Jadgetiger. It had some good scratch built scenery including a very nice railway embankment and I especially liked the road that was made out of latex. The Bognor Club were very friendly and always stopped to talk to the public.

Having read Walter new set of rules he had brought the day before, I made my way to the Model Kings International stand to buy the Babylon 5 Wars rules Compendium and Ships of the Fleet. They had a game going involving loads and loads of Narn G’Qaun heavy cruiser and about four Shadow cruisers, needless to say the Narns were taking a dam good hammering. This is the first time I’ve seen all the Babylon 5 Wars ships together in one place.

One of the most impressive displays at the show was next to a Tiger II, it was a cityscape of Berlin 1945, and most if not all of it looked scratch built. There was a nice touch of a periscope at one end of the main street when you looked through it you could almost have been there.

I next visited the Old Crow Stand and brought some of their futuristic ships. Apparently Henry, Paul and Walter had already hit this stand big time, so much so in fact that when we passed their stand later on in the day one of them was heard to comment "There goes our sponsor." The buildings, ships and vehicle are cast in resin; the castings are very crisp and need little if any work on them. Some of the items come with etched brass aerials.

Goose stepping back to our table in time to the marching music, I found Peter busily measuring every part of the Cromwell tank he could get to. He is going to make a 1/12^th or 1/15^th scale model of it, I should like to see that when it is finished. You could always tell the trader or exhibitors that were anywhere near our table, it didn’t matter were you where, they all had an irresistible urge to start whistling that dam German marching music.

As the weekend drew to it close we started to pack the game away, (talking of packing things away, have you ever noticed that things never seem to fit back into the same box you got them out of the day before?) We then started to earn our Behind the Lines discount by helping Richard load up his van. It was then arranged that On the way back home we should stop off at a Little Chef and have a meal, However we some how managed to loose Richard and Peter on the way. So when we pulled off the A31 into the Little Chef, only Paul, Henry, Walter and myself were there. Four mixed grills later it was back in the cars for the long journey home. The amount of lead, resin and paper that was in the carrier bags in the back of Walters car was beginning to tell because, even with the RATO units we couldn’t keep up with Paul.

All in all it was a great weekend and I can’t wait until next year.