February Funfair

One thing I wasn't expecting to see last weekend was a funfair. The bonfire fairs typically mark the end of the season so most showmen return to their yards for winter during November and apart from a few small Christmas and New Year events don't go on the road again until mid to late February or sometimes March. The Kings Lynn Mart is the traditional season-starter and that didn't open until Valentine's Day, by which time this fair in Milton Keynes had been there for a week, so it is very early in the season for them to be open for business.

It was quite wet. This was as close as I could get to Denzil Danter's Volvo because of that massive puddle

Magnum opus

The Renault Magnum in showland

If I was to ask you to name a typical British fairground lorry, chances are you'd say the classic duo of ERF and Foden, although with those marques gone for over a decade, nowadays Volvo, Scania and DAF are all making considerable inroads into showland at their expense. One manufacturer you probably wouldn't think of is Renault, and there are only a handful of this company's products to be found on the fairs and circuses of Britain.

The Renault Magnum however is one of my personal favourite types as it looks like nothing else on the road with its enormous boxy flat-floored cab and styling that must have been quite space-age at launch in 1991. My love for the Magnum no doubt comes from living in an area where my local fairs are frequently graced by at least one example, so this piece focuses on the Magnums I have photographed on the travelling scene in recent years.

A trio of fairground Magnums in one place, a very rare sight in this country

The Greatest Show on Earth

Atlas Editions 'Greatest Show on Earth' series review

 

I have previously written about Atlas Editions, so you should be familiar with their business model of offering subscriptions to collections of items. One such collection, announced in 2014, was 'The Greatest Show on Earth', a range of fairground and circus models in 1/76 scale, and as a collector of fairground vehicles in this scale I naturally subscribed to this series. Although I have not received any confirmation that the collection is complete and no further models will be sent, it has been over six months since anyone received a new model and I have exactly thirty so it seems as if it has indeed come to an end and thus I can do a review of the entire collection.

The man in the silver Rover

A strange encounter at the fair

 

The bonfire fair at Campbell Park in Milton Keynes came to a close on Sunday, and as is traditional I paid a visit yesterday to watch the showmen pull down their equipment and depart from the ground. There is a culture of mutual respect between showmen and funfair enthusiasts so the latter are to be expected and are generally welcomed as long as they don't cause trouble. The enthusiast community is very small and tight-knit so we are often known to each other and to many showmen, but I had a rather strange encounter yesterday with someone I had never seen before who didn't really seem to have a genuine reason to be there and was basically being a nuisance: the mysterious man in the silver Rover. Who was he and what was he doing there?

The fairground arcade - a thing of the past?

Go to the funfair and along with all the rides, stalls and catering units, what other form of entertainment are you likely to find? The amusement arcade of course, offering a range of video games, slot machines, prize grabbers and so on to test your skill and luck. However, it has become apparent in recent years that arcades are now in decline and becoming an increasingly rare sight on the fairgrounds of Britain - no longer are they an essential feature guaranteed to appear at pretty much any fair, and they are becoming conspicuous by their absence in some places.

On its way out, both figuratively and literally. Billy Gumble's arcade leaves Cambridge a few years ago; for now, this one is still travelling.

A fairground favourite

My home town's annual Charter Fair is always a highlight of the year for me - two consecutive weekends when, by ancient Royal Charter, the town centre is taken over by funfair rides and attractions, together with the lorries that transport them of course. Think of British fairground transport and you'll almost certainly think of ERF.

In 1999 the B-series ERF was still fairly common on the fairs.

Ever since I started photographing the fair way back in 1998, one particular lorry has attended every single year and has become a firm favourite that I am always delighted to see. Registered JKY 452W, she is a B-series ERF built in 1980 and fitted with the fantastic-sounding 240bhp Gardner 8LXB straight-eight engine, and has been owned for many years by the Forest family, who I believe are based in Oxfordshire; having belonged to the late Malcolm Forest, she is now in the hands of his sons Mark and Gary. A classic showman's drawbar unit with a box body and generator, the double-drive rear bogie apparently predates the lorry itself, having been transplanted from an even older A-series.

At the most recent fair I was told by her proud owners that they have a repaint planned for the winter months and there is no intention whatsoever to retire her from service. As the once-common B-series gets ever rarer on the fairs, here's hoping this fine survivor continues for many more reliable years!

Same lorry, same place, 15 years on and still looking just as smart.

Just listen to that sweet straight-eight Gardner...