Busabella's First VDub Festival

My friend Lyn and her husband Peter are avid VW campers and hearing of their adventures in their Transporter was the original catalyst for my hankering for our own bus. They love to camp at the various VW festivals held throughout the summer months and suggested that we come along to Dorset Volksfest for our first taster of  the "Vdub" life.


We decided to go for the day as we haven't yet completely kitted out Busabella for an proper overnight stay (but we are working on this). Arriving just before midday we were greeted by the sight of a field full of fabulous VW's of every type, age and state of repair, with the beautiful hills of Wareham forest stretching into the background. We paid our £8 (bargain!) each to get in and parked up.

Having located Lyn and Peter, we joined them for a cuppa at their lovingly restored VW T4 Transporter, while they gave us the low down on the best bits of the festival. Wandering down to the show area was amazing as it was full of VW's of every sort, from Beetles, beach buggies, Polo's and Golfs, to every conceivable type of camper. The car park alone was a show in itself. There were some truly amazing restoration jobs and encouragingly, quite a few that were a work in progress. Here are some of my favourites;

A very prominent style of VW restoration were the "Rats". These are vehicles that are painstakingly styled to look rusty, bleak and apocalyptic. I was surprised how much I liked them and really appreciated the huge amount of work that had gone into the designs. It's a bit off the wall that most of us are trying to keep the rust off our vintage vehicles while these guys spend so much time replicating decay with paint!

One of the best (in my humble novice VW enthusiast opinion) was a fantastic rat split screen that had been beautifully styled to make the interior look as if it was made of wood. The work and ingenuity that has gone into this VW is amazing;

This is another rat restored by the same guys;

                        The festival itself was excellent - small enough not to be intimidating, but big enough not to be boring. We found the Vdub crowd a very friendly bunch of people over a wide variety of ages. There were bands on from midday to around 11.30pm, and we were really impressed by the quality of the music. My favourite was a superb Foo Fighters tribute band called Something for Nothing, who absolutely rocked the music marquee.

Aside from terrific music, the food and drink concessions were really reasonably priced, which was refreshing. Presumably they can't charge ridiculous prices as the Vdubbers would just retreat to their vans with a deck of beer and a barbecue! There were heaps of trade stalls, which were again reasonably priced. We bought a few bits and bobs, including a faux tax disc from June 1984 (Busabella's registration date) and a keyring which kind of says it all;

One of the things that we absolutely loved about the festival is the fact that if it all got a bit too much we could wander back to Busabella and make a cup of tea. We did this several times during the day and it was great to just go and chill for a bit when the "festivaling" got a bit too hot or tiring. We completely got that camping there would be absolutely brilliant and were very impressed that Lyn and Peter had actually towed their caravan with their VW so that they had their own bathroom, plus a nice big bed to sleep in! We will definitely be coming to Dorset Volksfest next year, quite possibly with Busabella towing our caravan. Rob is already working out the tow weight ratio...….

We have floated the idea of making it a family Vdub camping trip next year as my nephew has a VW Caravelle. This seems to have been well received, so watch this space!