Family history @ Crawley

Today was the Sussex and South London Family HIstory Fair at the K2 Sports Centre Crawley - another Quatermain event. Follow http://www.familyhistoryfairs.com/ to see which other events are on offer.

This is the second year for this event at this centre - a nice new building, well appointed and one where, this year, we were able to get a reasonable data signal for most of the day.

We (The Census Detectives) managed to see and help quite a few people during the day and, as with most shows, didn't get much time for a look around or chat during the show itself.

Bracknell show is upon us...

... and a good event it is. Close to our base of operations in Ash - so only a half hour drive to the venue; a known location so we know where the food and drink is!

This year there were two halls setup - the main sports hall (with the Census Detectives and the SoG bookshop, amongst others) and the Badminton (?) courts on the other side of the complex.

We certainly had quite a bit of traffic through our space - I'm not sure what it was like on the other side.

Communications went well so we were able to attend to many queries - sometimes even helping people's research endeavours!!

We met up with Carol, Ron, Mick and Tom at the end of the day for a meal at the local Harvester pub - Mick's birthday is on Tuesday so that's enough of excuse - as if one was actually needed...

It's Family History fair season again..

... and the Census Detectives are on the move.

Jeanne, John and I will be at the East of London fair in Barking this weekend.

Wimborne, Family History, Car Navigation

Here we are on Sunday morning, up at 6 so we could be on the way by 7...

It's a family history fair (The Dorset and South West Fair) run by Alec Quartmain - this link http://members.aol.com/aquarterma/familyhistoryfairs.html will get you to his website for other places and dates.

It should have taken us about and hour and a half to get there - if the TomTom navigator could have found the right place. The trip itself was relatively uneventful although the weather was quite atrocious - it rained for most of the way there and the late rising of the sun in the early mornings here at the moment just adds to thrill!

The navigator indicated we were at our location giving us plenty of time to find somewhere to grab some breakfast before getting into the leisure centre to set up our tables. Unfortunately the leisure centre itself was nowhere to found. After a couple of minutes I noticed that we were not on Blandford Road as we should have been, so we input that as a location and was told that it was another 6 miles down road...

It was 'A' Blandford Road not THE Blandford Road that we needed... we tried calling both Ron and Carol (Genealogy Printers) but both of their phones we not accepting calls (bummer) - we reverted to the ol' Road Atlas to find a place called Hillbutts (a name included in the address but not available on the TomTom. We finally got close enough to where we needed to be that there were now signs pointing us towards the Queen Elizabeth Leisure Centre - woohoo! and it only added an extra half hour onto the trip...

Of course it was still raining (having escalated to hail for a short time earlier) so it was a mad dash to get the car unloaded as quickly and as dryly as possible.

Once the car had been parked we were able to get our tables setup prior to looking for some kind of coffee and breakfast. We had three tables for this fair (normally we do with two) so it meant we could spread out a bit. John was able to establish reasonably quickly that we could get a signal on the data cards so we set about getting the rest setup.

We (Jeanne, John and I) have laptops for these events. The people at FindMyPast provide Jeanne and John with data cards that connect into the mobile phone services to provide 3G or GPRS connection to the internet. I have a setup that allows Jeanne and I to have a small LAN environment to I can share her internet connection - I also bring along a laser printer to share on the network for doing any ad-hoc printing. We normally have a banner announcing our wares but this time we managed to not bring it - it had been shifted and partially hidden in the room at Jeanne's place, so was overlooked - a temporary solution was found so at least people could find us...

And speaking of finding - Jeanne went in search of coffee and bacon rolls for breakfast, except there were none - the leisure centre had closed down it's cafe so nothing was provided on-site except for chips 'n chocolate from a vending machine - at a 'health' centre - and staff on duty didn't seem to think that was out-of-place...

Jeanne and I headed into Wimborne in the hopes of finding a cafe or bakery so that we could also get something in for lunch... all that was open on this Sunday morning (excluding the church) was a Martin's newsagent which fortunately had (just) enough in the way of sandwiches to provide some chewy goodness(?)

The day itself was surprisingly busy given the weather. We managed to see about 40 people (I think) between us. It still amazes me how many people will go to a family history fair, where they'll be able to talk to family history societies, us and others, to get advice on their research... and they fail to actually bring any of it with them! Some do turn up with notes and charts so we can help them through some difficulty or other but there are still a large number that will be trying to remember the dates and names and then get frustrated that we can't help when presented with such scant information - c’est la vie

The trip home was easier with only a minor(ish) delay caused by an accident on the M27 (or it might have been the M3 by then...)

This was the last fair for the year, so it was good to do a final catch-up with the regulars Ron & Carol (Genealogy printers), Mick and Tom (Stepping Stones), Howard (GoONS bookstall) and others. Next fair that we will be going to is the East of London in late January - check out the Outreach page in the events calendar on the Society of Genealogist website (link is on the side panel).

After helping pack up I head off. Ron and Carol & Mick and Tom and I catch up for a meal at a pub on the way back to the M4.

Nice food and good company. It's a releatively quick meal as R&C are back up to Wolverhampton and M&T are onto London(ish - near Heathrow) - I, on the other hand, just go back to my hotel for another (hopefully) quiet evening and good sleep in.