Back from Greenbelt

A shower and a shave this morning, a welcome relief after a weekend with no showers and no inclination to get my razor out. It starts on Thursday, and after giving a talk to house group members about my time in israel/palestine, I meet up with helen and chris. Now the plan to travel to greenbelt involves four of us, two tents, camping stove, food and clothes squeezing into the fiesta, so when h arrived she was mocked for elephantine travel bag. Next stop andrew's house where we would spend the night giving us easy access to the m1 in the morning and to collect utensils and pans etc too. It's just gone 10pm and everything is going to plan, andrew asks h and c about collecting their tickets at greenbelt. Tickets, hmmm, that would be useful, and I knew exactly where mine was, still in the safe location back at my house. So back to the car and back to mine to pick it up, what an idiot. Still, better making that journey at night than getting caught in rush hour traffic!

So starts our journey.

In fact the travel down is pleasant, the roads aren't too busy and we make good time, reaching the site around 1030. This year, not only does greenbelt have the opportunity to explore creativity, listen to music, be challenged by talks and spend time in worship, but a chance to perhaps meet one or two bloggers whom I became aware of after blogging about last year's festival. One such blogger is 'world famous' dave walker of cartoon church. A blog that has been an amusing read all year. A few cars ahead in the queue to enter the site we spotted a camper-van, and knowing that dave is an owner of such a vehicle, we wondered if he would be on board. Alas, no, just another punter, still not to worry, there would be opportunity to meet him during the weekend at either book signing or the wibsite get together. Once on site we headed over to campsite 9 taking random turns in a search for a spare plot of grass on which to pitch our tents. Due to some erroneous manoeuvre we seemed to end up traversing outside the cordoned road way, with no apparent route back onto the correct path, in fact we seemed to be heading further and further towards the perimeter wood and fearing getting the car stuck in a bog, drastic measures were called for. The cordon, appeared to have quite a bit of give in it, so chris got out the car and held the cordon aloft as I drove underneath in a kind of car-limbo dance. Ahead we spotted a space, but as we were still confined to the maze-like road network, we decided to employ our cordon defying technique and take a cross country route to the sighted plot. Off we headed, chris in front lifting cordons, me squeezing the car underneath. The plot was reached, next job to check that it wasn't being reserved for a multitude and to scan for any children under ten who may be awake and playing football against the side of the tent come 6am. No kids, good, check with the neighbours, and wait a minute, we have only just gone and pulled alongside cartoon church dave!

"Hi, are you cartoon dave?"
"I am."
"It's chris, I read your blog a lot and commented a few times as the moog"
"Who??"

Obviously my blogging exploits haven't set the blogging world alight, much to the amusement of my friends.

Still, dave is a very friendly chap and we soon make ourselves his neighbours and settle down to read the programme and decide what things we wanted to do.

So that is the tale of how we arrived at greenbelt, when I've uploaded some pics to flickr I shall give a review of some of the things that I did over the weekend. Which reminds me, I've got a new camera, decided to treat myself and replace my camera I lost earlier in the year in Cambridge.

greenbelt2006
greenbelt