"Blyth Battery Goes to War" - May 16/17th After Elvington, I didn't want another weekend camping, particularly as Blyth is frequently cold and has boy racers meeting in the car park at all hours. That in combination with the high fuel prices, resulted in taking the Jeep each day, rather than the Dodge. Despite a poor forecast, it stayed bright all weekend, but with a cold wind from the sea on Saturday and from land on Sunday.

The allied camp was located on the main show field as usual, with the German and Russian displays on the ridge to the South of the battery, close to the battle area. The majority of the vehicles were Jeeps, but there were a few different vehicles on show. While the contents of the show is mainly World War 2, there were also a selection of post war vehicles.



Many of the displays are more or less the same at these events. They all have the same weapons, field kit and tents, so the Home Guard display makes a nice change. They had a selection of weapons used by the Home Guard, that were deemed impractical or ineffective by the Army. Seeing them in person and hearing how they were used, shows just how impractical they were and it is probably a good job they were never needed to protect the shores of Britain.

I didn't take my DSLR camera with me on either day, just relying on my phone instead. This meant that during the battle, I had to stick to the action that was going on near me. With that in mind, I positioned myself near the bunker, guessing that the final action would be concentrated in that location. I missed the battle on Saturday as I was too busy talking. The German forces won day one. On Sunday, it was the Allied forces attacking, storming the German positions. On the far side of the battle arena, the French Resistance were having their own fight, but that was too far away for my phone to get any decent pictures.

The event which is from 10am to 4pm, is free for the public to attend and is supported by fundraising by the battery volunteers across the year, supported by the council. Public numbers were probably slightly down this year, most likely due to the cool weather. If it's going to be a nice day, there's a lot more people to come to spend the day at the beach and take in the show while there. It was a 62 mile round trip each day, cutting cross country and through the Tyne Tunnel to try to avoid most of the fast routes and this showed just how bad the UK roads are. It felt like I was being shot at with anti-aircraft fire all the way there and back. You think the roads are bad driving a modern car, but have no idea until you ride on leaf springs and a two inch seat cushion!

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