We managed to tie in my art demo with this gig, heading to West Meon the day before and camping overnight, then back up to Dorking Golf Club after lunch. A little less driving than returning home between. We took the caravan to a lovely little site at West Meon which is just £18 a night – no facilities, just water and disposal – with a pleasant local walk along a disused railway to the prettiest village with a great community shop and cafe. My demo was at Lee On Solent so I headed off to do that in the evening while Jim had a lovely relaxed evening having walked to the local pub. The site was very quiet, only one other caravan right the other end of the field, so we could have a band practice in the morning without fear of disturbing anyone. Took advantage of National Trust Membership (last year’s birthday present) to visit Hinton Ampner before heading up to Dorking. Gorgeous gardens and an impressive house which was hosting a flower festival – always a good place for song inspiration, a national trust property!
Found a good spot to stop with the caravan to cook tea before heading into the golf club. The car park is big enough for us to leave the caravan during the evening and they kindly offered to let us put it in the overflow car park overnight if we wanted to stay, but we decided to travel back. Mick, who we’d met at Croydon Folk Club, greeted us on arrival. Robert was compere (sang a hilarious song about Harry Potter, accompanying himself on the bowed psaltery) and Dave was on sound. A really welcoming bunch and lots of the audience are regulars and came over for a chat.
This was our second time playing here and we had a larger audience than last time – didn’t count but guess more than 30. The Dorking Golf Club is not a posh affair. It’s quite simple inside with a small bar and there are beautiful views from the club room. We had been booked to come in January 2025 but were invited to come earlier instead as a guest had been forced to cancel. Last time we played acoustic, this time we used the in-house PA which was fine. There is one floor spot each half of the evening. Everyone was up for singing along, even from the start of songs, and there was a true spontaneous encore call which was lovely. We sold 4 CDs and got a couple of sign ups to our email list. The agreement was for a set fee or 80% of ticket sales, whichever is greater, plus we had the option of overnight accommodation (even if we didn’t have the caravan in tow). We got home at 1am after an issue with some broken traffic lights en route.
