I’d heard about Reg Jellis yard and this event held in aid of Guide Dogs for the blind each year so was keen to go and what an amazing place it was.
Despite Saturday’s best efforts to drown Herts in a deluge, Sunday dawned bright and clear and delivered a perfect crisp Autumn day.
A bunch of Bees met in the car park of Halfords at Hemel Hempstead and set off behind Laurie through beautiful country lanes, pretty villages and over precariously steep canal bridges to Cheddington, famed for being the drop-off point for the The Great Train Robbery.
Wow! We arrived into this yard full of huge military vehicles flanked by sheds filled with paraphernalia of all sorts. The collection of many years. Who else has rockets in their shed?
In the adjacent field enthusiasts had military and classic vehicles on display and there were folks mingling in Forties and military dress.
Something of interest for everyone made for a great afternoon meeting and chatting, with the smell of BBQ food, especially frying onions filling the air.
For a donation to the Guide Dogs cause you could ‘fill your boots’ with hot drinks and burgers and sausages supplied by a local butcher, and the helpers worked tirelessly as the number of people arriving grew as the warm afternoon went on.
A large table of raffle prizes kept being added to throughout the day and Karen ‘the raffle ticket Queen’ and helper did another amazing job sallying forth to fill an ice-cream tub with cash.
Consequently the raffle took ages to draw to much amusement, especially on our table as none of us had a winning ticket and Bob (N) kept saying it might be dark by the time we set off etc. And Johnny said that nearly every ticket was one he’d bought and given away.
Just as well we didn’t win anything enormous as no-one was riding an outfit.
After the raffle, the last event was the auction of a trip up in a vintage plane owned by a local chap which raised around a hundred pounds.
It was debated whether this event would continue next year due to the amount of work involved etc and I hope that the great turn-out and therefore hopefully the good amount raised will encourage them to find a way to continue.
A blind chap there with his Guide Dog who has been attending for many years thanked everyone for the support given to the cause, and those of us attending will remember it as a great day out.
Many thanks to Bob Norman for taking me and thanks as always to the Bees for being such good company.
