Opening weekend

12 September 2011


Tucked in for the night. Just the way we like them - quiet.



Opening the park on Wednesday gave us the luxury of a couple of warm-up days before the first large group of campers arrived on Friday. Or so we thought. 31 bookings on Thursday quickly swelled to 52 actually checking in; many of them also then decided to book for later dates.

Friday and Saturday nights we were at full capacity of 98 vans, and had to send a lot more to the alternative location at Alexandra Park.

As expected the biggest challenge was the language barrier, with about 70% of our guests this weekend being French. It's hard to keep talking slowly when you have six vans waiting to check in. But most of them do a better job of speaking our language here than we do of speaking their language over there. Favourite phrase of the weekend: We want to stay this day, tomorrow and next tomorrow.

Musketeers waiting for the shuttle.

Everyone is certainly here to have a great time and the atmosphere is very relaxed and friendly. One of our security guards even organised a France vs the Rest of the World touch rugby game.

And now it is Monday, the place is almost empty and we get a few days of reprieve before the next onslaught - Ireland is playing Australia here this weekend, so we'll have a completely different mix of nationalities. And no doubt there will some serious partying to be done. Again.

One of our more unusual visitors - using the boat ramp at Z Pier.

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