We spent the bank holiday camping. In Northamptonshire, as it’s next door to Leicestershire. Why Leicestershire? Because every May bank holiday, VW devotees from around the country descend on a stately pile in Lutterworth to show off their cars, pick up spare parts, and lust over the idea of life on the open road in a Volkswagen Camper.

I can identify most closely with that last group, but even if you don’t harbour secret thoughts of spending the night on a Swiss roadside and throwing open your curtains next morning to a magnificent vista of Lake Geneva, there’s plenty to appreciate in the design and style of the cars on show.

Like the original Beetles, with their distinctive back ends. Rich tells me this is called the Pope’s nose, and you can see why. Even the windows and the smooth swooping lines of the boot make a pair of eyes and some jowls.

And isn’t this the most beautiful contrast of fonts? I love the way the caps are all joined by the broken underline, which almost turns them into a heartbeat on a hospital monitor.

Now really I know nothing about cars. I know my own one is blue, and I know the make and family, but I couldn’t tell you the engine capacity, or even the exact model, but it is easy when going around a show like this to see how cars have evolved over time, and that while we may say modern cars have no style of their own - they’re all either boxy or curvy, and they all look the same - that was pretty much always the case.

Design conventions and trends of the moment seem to apply just as much to cars as they do to fashion, which is why this zoomy yellow thing makes me thing of an air-suspended Citroen even though it’s nothing of the sort.

It was a fun day out, and a fun weekend overall, with the tent getting its first airing in about a year and a half. We found a site down by a lake, and zipped closed the door on Saturday night in the half-light of a warm orange sunset.

It wasn’t quite the same story on Sunday, when we spent the evening playing rummy in the light of a lantern, hiding from the swingers in the little caravan next door, and listened to rain as it pattered on the canvas. It made our sleeping bags feel so snuggly.

I’m eager now, for some sunny weather so we can camp again. This weekend marked the end of an almost unbroken run of good weather that has lasted six weeks, but the drizzle didn’t really put any dampners on things. The dozen or so dogs on the pet-friendly site certainly liked it, although they soon regretted getting so muddy when they turned up for a shower.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.