A combination of factors really, the main few being :
- The land rover mag sponsored shows started to burgeon into existance, the last straw being the Peterborough show on the same weekend. These took away the trade stands that helped pay for the event.
- The lack of volunteers, as usual in clubs it is usually the same people who end up doing all the work year in, year out. Whilst very satisfying in pulling of a good weekend, after several years you hope somone else will step up and let the oldies just enjoy the weekend, but it never happens.
- With falling visitors and lack of trade stands the financial exposure to the club began getting too close to the mark, A succesful weekend paid for itself and added a few pennies to the coffers, a bad weekend would have bankrupted the club.
- YLROCs dwindling membership.
So sadly I think 2006 was the last year, ironically I do have a 2007 shirt at home but if I recall correctly it was cancelled that year due to another foot and mouth scare.
The club then elected not to continue. It was sad given that it was the first open 4x4 weekend, originally running at Top Farm for around 10 years then moved to Langley Farm around 1991/2 for the next 15 years. ( I personally attended the last Top Farm) when I got my first Land Rover and joined YLROC.
Sadly those that attend events rarely think of all the hard work that goes in, in this case several working weekends every year to prepare the off road course, rapair the bridges over the stream that got vandalised every year and clearing the wooland tracks and then preparing the mud run.
Then of course just running the event, emptying all the bins, tidying the site through the day, marshalling the off road course, manning the club tent and worst of all marshalling the contra flow on the farm track accessing the site, that was a very lonely job, thank heavens for Granny who diligently ran around brining drinks and food to all those that were volunteering.
Then f fourse after all the visitors have left carefully line searching all the site picking up litter down to the sweet wrappers and bottle lids into the night, then of course we all had work in the morning!
I used to travel up there from Herts and always ended up working hard on the site all weekend. As I have already mentioned, it was a great feeling to help pull off a great weekend, but after 15 years, with few coming in tfrom the ranks you just end up giving up.
RIP Langley Farm