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WOW, what a day!! How on earth can I summarise on one page, today's event? With a temperature improvement of 21 degrees on last year, my usual 6.15 a.m arrival on site was certainly a lot easier to deal with! Our first car turned up at around 7.50 & half hour after our official start time of 9 a.m ALL 3 car parks were FULL !... & all the time the constant stream of classics kept coming into Romsey. With 3 guys managing the entrances, the other 2 of us scowered the car parks desperately looking for and trying to create spaces and were constantly on radios once finding one ( apologies if anyone tried to speak with me at this time ). NEVER have we seen anything like it, the volume, the variety and the earliness of arrivals. I haven't done anymore advertising than previous years so I'm guessing the amazing weather that was promised brought everyone out from as far afield as Wells, Cirencester, Ealing, Guildford etc etc etc. We were well and truly overrun with the volume of vehicles and did our very best to utilise every last inch of the site, so my apologies if you had to circle around a few times or parked elsewhere in the town but once you'd walked the site I am sure you could understand why! A fellow show organiser stated later that he had 500 leaflets to hand out and ran out of his 500 and guesstimated at between 6 & 700 vehicles in attendance!! We knew it had been crazy and that attendance was up but that's one crazy amount of motors squeezed into 3 market town car parks!

I'd like to say sorry to anyone I couldn't get to chat with or started to chat with but then got sidelined due to so much going on. On a personal level, At 9 a.m a friend of mine of 30 years and of similar age stood in front of me riddled with cancer & told me he has 2 months to live & weak with the cancer, fell over right in front of me. Within 5 minutes of that heartbreaking news a couple, driving an X reg 1983 Mini launched into a personal attack on me for not letting them into a pre 1976 show (?) stating I was prejudiced against Minis ( there were already 10 on site I think ! ) and pointing out other post 1976 vehicles were on site ( a handful were, which is explained on our "poster" page, bottom left ) & then threatened to go to the press about me ( ? !!). I have to say that after hearing Tony's tragic news & already contemplating giving up this event due to so much of this kind of abuse from non category / public car owners over the last 3 years, Mr & Mrs X reg Mini I could have done without! I asked if they'd paid to get in to this FREE event? they said no. I stated they were complaining about a free event that their car was not eligible for?? They still complained, I stated that if they were going to abuse me further it would cost a £5 donation to the charity for the abuse of my ears, they refused...... I told them to go forth and multiply ........... Why highlight this here? I feel bad others witnessed it and offer my apologies to anyone present
( see STEVE FAVELL's comment in our "comments" box on "Welcome" page ) but I do hope from reading the above, you can understand why and see just the kind of needless abuse we sadly have to put up with!! Other than that, abuse to myself and my brilliant marshalls was at a minimum this year I'm very pleased to say and the event was full of nice people and had a great atmosphere amidst the chaos!.

My parents and I counted up our collection tins for THE PROSTATE CANCER CHARITY at the event close & I'm very pleased to say that it is up massively on last year & stands at a whopping £1708.60, so thank YOU ALL for being so generous in your donations!! The whole day has been a blur, I am already seeing pics on the net & realising I barely saw half of the cars in attendance but Jeez, didn't we have a right eclectic mix of vehicles?!?! the variety of which was astounding, so a big thank you to each and everyone of you for making the effort to come to our little event!

As a final note, I'd like to add that there has been a huge amount of lovely people that came up and praised us during the event & asked for us not to stop it, and those comments & similar kind hearted sentiments left here & on facebook have been just unbelievable. We do it for the love of it not for the thanks ....... BUT your kind words sure as hell go a long way in counterbalancing the rough words we have had too many of, so a HUGE thank you to each and everyone of you for those kind sentiments expressed to us, they certainly mean a lot to me & most definitely have STOPPED me considering pulling out of the event............
  .......... so I WILL see you same time, same place Boxing Day 2012 :-)   Thank You ! 

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