Summer Camp.

I was never a great fan of the annual summer camp, I would have preferred to wait until winter and go skiing however. We once packed the company onto busses & 4 tonners and travelled from Soltau to the Mosel Valley where we pitched tents and had a fortnight hill walking & canoeing, and more than a bit of drinking if memory serves. As summer camps went that one was OK.

About 1980 we went as a troop to Cochem for some windsurfing R&R.

Two problems:

1. The Mosel at Cochem was not at all suitable for windsurfing.
2. We didn't take any boards.

I remember one day we went for a long walk (anathema to cavalry) and one day we went round the old Nurburgring in a mate's Peugeot 504. Otherwise it was all about "wine tasting" and socialising with the girls on the camp-site.

Come to think of it, I don't think the remainder of the camp-site in their posh tents took kindly to a troop of Geordie cavalry in a couple of 9 by 9s.

Ummmmmmmmmm! This was not my recollection of Summer Camp, although the RA did do similar things as well!

The camp I was refering to was the non- tactical ones, where Live Firing of the 175mm Gun took place without the tactical aspects etc.

Poor, set upon, squaddies...imagine the hardship of attending a summer camp in the Mosel Valley!!! The brain shudders at the pure inhumanity of it all!!! LOL

Stephen Lock wrote:

Poor, set upon, squaddies...imagine the hardship of attending a summer camp in the Mosel Valley!!!  The brain shudders at the pure inhumanity of it all!!! LOL

Indeed! I holiday twice a year in Burgen in the Mosel Valley at the cost of several hundred pounds. I wouldn't at all complain if it was free!

What is that shoulder flash with the gold battle-axe? I feel I may have actually worn it but, as usual, I can't remember.

Think the shoulder flash you refer to was that of the Minden based 11 Infantry Brigade of the 1960s.

JPW wrote:

Think the shoulder flash you refer to was that of the Minden based 11 Infantry Brigade of the 1960s.

I wasn't there in the 60s. Left in '59.