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Collecting tents after the V festival
I
f you want to see what waste and mess looks like,
drive past the camping site after the annual V Festi- val. This was my second time collecting tents so I was prepared but for the first timers it comes as a real shock to see the scale of the waste. It is not just the tents, which Rotary can put to good use by selling them on and using the money for good causes, it is the sheer waste of food, clothing, chairs, mattresses and much more.
T
Club Secretary Geoffrey Furzland
Club Treasurer Jim Haines
he price of tents and other camping goods is so cheap it is not worth the bother of
taking down tents and taking them home so the festival goers just pack their personal belongings and leave the rest. When the festival started these tents and everything else was just bulldozed and dumped and it was only when some keen eyed Rotarian came along that it was realized that something could be done about the appalling waste and help some of those poor people in need at the same time.
O
nce one gets over the shock of the scene before them the task of collecting tents
and other salvageable items begin. One has to be a little selective about which tents are packed into the green bags, some are not very enticing, but after a couple of tents have been taken down and stored you soon get into a rou- tine and you are soon able to pick out those tents which are the easiest to manage. The tents range in size from those that would easily sleep ten down to the those that just about hold two. The ones that caused me Geoff and Jim the most trouble were the two manners that just spring to life when they are taken from the bag. There is a technique for folding these clever little devils which we never quite managed to master although the scouts and
guides who were also collecting tents, man- aged to put on a master class when it came to bagging this particular item. Having com- pletely ruined and demolished one such tent we steered clear of them and left them in the capable hands of YOUTH.
T
he experience was quite enjoyable until the rain came. Unfortunately it arrived so
quickly and with such ferocity that come of us were unable to take ad- vantage of the wet weather gear that we had brought with us and as a result we were soaked through ( I did managed to get some golf waterproof trousers on so my lower regions were dry). Then the sun came out briefly and we started to dry out only for mother nature to visit us again and again with short but quite heavy bouts of rainfall. We did manage to col- lect quite a few tents and mattresses before we had a cup of coffee and decided to call it a day. We left Brian and John Kent to it as Jim drove Geoff and me home in his new car which was constantly steaming up as we dried out.
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