Kelso has been hit by a plague of 2CVs, five thousand of them – the world 2CV festival has landed rather like the canisters in HG Wells ‘War Of The Worlds’ – first you see a few of them and are intrigued by the different looking beings and then when they are everywhere the danger is apparent and it is too late – travelling in convoys on ‘raids’ and ignoring most of the driving laws (apart from speeding for obvious reasons).
They are supposed to be contributing 1.4 million to the Kelso economy – which I think breaks down to mainly petrol and oil – speaking to traders in general who have spent more on advertising and preparing for a deluge of ex-hippies (and not so ex hippies) and teachers on all sides of the roads, with very little return. Wetherspoons had a beer and food tent and they had their own currency ‘The Kelso’ which was traded in large volumes for beer (also in large volumes).
They certainly chose the week with the worst rainfall in the whole year and I don’t envy their position camping in this cold and wet weather – although it can be argued that people do not visit Scotland for the sunshine. Kelso residnets kindly offered shelter to those with young families and in all the 2CVers seemed to have a whale of a time.
Still one of them visited our geocache at Lempitlaw and left a pink model 2CV (shortly exchanged for a white stress cat toy by ramblers from Galashiels).
