I'm very excited to tell you about our annual meet this year.
The KOMBI Sleepover has grown from just a small gathering of Brazilian VW Bay owners to what many in our club regard as our equivalent of Camperjam! To date we have made good use of the rally field at Anita's Campsite in Banbury, but it's been clear over the last 2 years that we really had outgrown the venue. So it's time to think bigger!
The KOMBI Sleepover 2016 takes place in a field exclusive to us within the estate of Ashgrove Farm, Ardley. The field will comfortably accommodate a large number of BraziBays and everything else we would need to enjoy a weekend together.
For the first time, we've hired in a big top marquee that includes a stage, a luxury toilet block, 3 independent showers and a generator to power the whole show! Another first this year is that the Sleepover is a 3 day event starting on Friday 27th May and wrapping up in the pm of Monday 30th May. That gives us plenty of time to have a lot of fun!
So here's what you can expect from this year's meet:
Friday – Arrivals DayA number of folk will have had to work during the day so we think the Friday should just be a turn-up, pitch and chill day. We'll have some low level tunes going on in the marquee in the evening, so it'll be ideal for catching up with friends once you've settled in.
Saturday – it's all about the '80s this year at The Sleepover. In the morning we want you to dress up your BraziBay in true 1980s style. How you interpret that is entirely down to you, but whoever's Kombi captures the spirit of our theme, will win Spike's Trophy.
After a break for lunch, we'll gather at the marquee for our legendary auction, raising funds for our chosen charity of Cancer Research. Our community has been incredibly generous over the years and we hope to continue in that vain for 2016. The auction will, like last year, be fixed at a duration of 60 minutes.
Around 4pm, those that wish to can join in trying to recreate the zombie moves from Michael Jackson's Thriller video. It's just for fun and an opportunity to loosen up for the 80s party coming later in the day.
Just before the party starts, we're running our very own Opportunity Knocks contest on stage, in the marquee. We've a number of talented individuals within the club, and this will be their chance to perform in front of our BraziBunch. The audience will decide who gets to be our champion for the night.
With that done, we'll start the 80s party – come suitably dressed and dance up to 10pm to some old skool classics. We'll take a break then as Brazilian Kampers treat us to a stunning firework display. After all the oohs and aahhs we'll be back into the marquee for a general disco up until 12am.
SundayWe'll kick the morning off – not too early – with the BraziBay Dog Show – hosted by harryhornet.
It's a tradition now on the Kombi Kapers that at at least one point, we put all our tables in a row and eat together, much like a street party. So that's what we'd like to do this year at The Sleepover, cook your lunch in your Kombi and then join your fellow owners in one long line and we all enjoy our food as one. Pretty much in Royal Wedding style!
After lunch, for those feeling up to it, we'll have our legendary Sports Day, to include a Tug-o-War, a sack race, egg and spoon race and of course culminating in rounders!
From 7pm – 8pm it's 80s KOMBI Karaoke – come along to the marquee and sing your heart out to some cheesy classics.
If anyone can take anymore 80s cheese from that point, we're switching into TV Game Show mode. We're going to recreate 3 classic gameshows on our stage, that we'll all know from that period, and we're looking for members of the club to be our stars. The shows we're recreating are:
Blankety Blank
Mr and Mrs
Play Your Cards Right
If you want to take part please let one of the mod team know!
Once we're all gameshowed-out we'll be awarding the Star Kombi Trophy, which we'd like everyone attending to vote for throughout the weekend up to this point. The voting box will be in the marquee.
Then from 10pm, as part of our bigger Sleepover, I'm delighted to tell you we'll have a live band on stage. The Heisenburgs have a wide repertoire – they're going to bang out some 80s classics for us to start and then switch into mainstream mode later in the night. They've been especially selected for our meet and I'm sure all will be impressed by their performance. Their presence at the show is very kindly being sponsored by St. Andrew's Motor Company, so that is fantastic and we thank them for that!
Checkout The Heisenburgs on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/theheisenburgs/
Monday
Over the years a number of brazilianvwbay members have asked about basic maintenance techniques. To help with this we're going to run a live workshop session, to include jobs such as an oil change, replacing plugs, fan belts and lubricating the front suspension. If there's anything you specifically want covered, please let us know in good time beforehand so we can include it in the schedule.
After that it'll be time to grab some lunch, pack up our campers and head home.
Hopefully you'll see that we've planned a full weekend for you at The KOMBI Sleepover 2016. The team think it'll be our best show yet and we really want you to join us. Obviously we've upped our game this year and the costs have risen due to hiring in the marquee, toilets, showers and generator to power the whole event. The facilities have been booked for 4 days/3 nights and so the entry fee needs to cover that. 1 nights is £35, 2 nights are £60 and the whole weekend is £75. The price is per BraziBay regardless of how many are in your party. We'd also like to open the show up to any friends and family you may wish to bring along, if you think they'd like to join in our fun. The show is very much focused around the BraziBays, but we reckon there's enough room now for more people to enjoy the BraziBunch experience. The price is per camping unit in this case, whether it be a campervan or tent.
To book please reply to this thread and I'll send you the necessary payment details.
A lot of work has been put into planning this year's show and the team and I really look forward to seeing you there!
The new location of our show is perfect. 1.2 miles from Junction 10 of the M40 and super-large! Here's an aerial view to show you how large a field we will have:
... and the view from ground level:
We'll have water available via a stand-pipe and the 'facilities' will be to the farm side of the field ie. southern.
Update 19th May 2016
We're just over a week away from what's going to be an amazing meet. Please see below how to enter Ashgrove Farm and how we plan to have things set up in our dedicated field.
Just next to Junction 10 of the M40 you'll find Cherwell Services featuring a number of retailers such as M&S Simply Food, Costa, Burger King, Greggs, WH Smith etc. There's a petrol station too, but of course the fuel prices there are at inflated prices!!
