On our campervan road trip to the Edinburgh Festival

Four girls (me, Liz, Jen, Heather) in a camper van on a road trip to Edinburgh Festival for five days…

The trip begun with us bursting into the van on a Monday morning and within moments Gene was piled high with sleeping bags, rucksacks, wellies and a hula hoop (still not sure why Jen brought it along).

With everyone settled and music at the ready; White Sky from Vampire Weekend we set off on Gene’s longest trip so far with 465 miles in front of us and hundreds of shows waiting for us at the other end.

Within moments there was a loud Whoop Whooping from the back, punctuated with “Edinburgh here we come Woo Hoooo!” and we all burst into fits of giggles which was pretty much how the rest of our adventure continued.

It’s interesting how quickly four supposedly mature girls can regress back into childhood the moment they get into a van for a roadtrip. It wasn’t long before the masks, which I had collected from festivals, were found in the cupboards and we brightened up the M1 with Liz being a penguin, Heather a cat and me a tiger. I’m not sure if tigers are allowed to drive on the M1 but fortunately there were no police around to find out.

Seven and a half hours later after a faultless performance by Gene we turned off the motorway and headed towards Liz’s parents house in Kirkbymoorside not far from York where we were staying the night.

Gene at Steve and Barbara's in Kirbymoorside

After a long debate in the nearby village co-op about what supplies we might need, we decided wine and chocolates would pretty much cover everything. We swung into Steve and Barbara’s driveway just in time to catch the last glimpses of sunshine in the garden and to our delight we were rewarded with a cold beer.

Despite being shattered after the long drive, we were all in high spirits and on the brink of mass hysteria. Our madness quickly rubbed off onto Steve and Barbara and we decided to have a fake Christmas just for the hell of it. Barbara found three crackers left over from last year but someone suggested it might be unlucky to pull crackers in August so to cancel out any bad luck I wore my lucky tiger hat even though it was hot.

Instead of turkey for dinner, which would’ve been asking a bit too much of Barbara as we’d only just decided it was Christmas, she rustled up some chilli con carne with a spring of mint on top as a substitute for holly. After a few glasses of wine we all sang Ding Dong Merrily on High, and Heather and I went off to sleep in the van. Heather, getting a little too much into the spirit of things, was slightly disappointed that we didn’t have any mince pies or sherry to leave for Father Christmas, so we left out a bottle of Evian, which was a healthier option.

Up at 7am, tea and cereal and then goodbyes to S and B as I absentmindedly drove over the Evian bottle; more Whoop Whooping as we proceeded down the road, memories of last night fading but with huge excitement about what was to come…