ABug SOUTH 13 to 15 November 2020 - CANCELLED

[JudgeBeeb]

THIS EVENT IS NOW CANCELLED

I know that it is a bit early to be announcing the next ABUG South, but with the potential uncertainty around ABUG Cambridge and the general doom and gloom, I thought it would be nice to have something good to look forward to, sufficiently in the future that we can have a reasonable expectation of things being somewhat back to normal. Furthermore, it may be the last date when our friends from the EU can join us without any particular border hassle.

So, the meet will take place from Friday 13th to Sunday 15th November 2020 at The Ely, London Road, Blackwater, CAMBERLEY, Hampshire, GU17 9LJ.

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It is a combined hotel and pub/restaurant. They have great food. (Click here for the menu.) They have a spiffing carvery for Sunday lunch. Rooms are comfortable and usually reasonably priced. There are often discount vouchers to be found, some of which, in the past, have resulted in insanely cheap rates.

Please hold off from booking a hotel room until closer to the time, when we should be able to identify vouchers (and the current uncertainties about travelling and group meetings have been, hopefully, resolved).

The venue is a short distance from J4a of the M3 and pretty close to the M4 too. There is a reasonable amount of parking on site. There are nearby stations at Blackwater and Fleet (both of which are under 10 minutes away by car) (and, as usual, I am sure that there will be volunteers to do pick-ups). Blackwater is just a branch line, but is only 20 minutes by train from Reading and less than an hour from London Paddington. Direct trains from London Waterloo to Fleet take between 45 minutes and an hour. The venue is about a half hour drive from Heathrow Airport.

The meeting room is much bigger than anywhere else we have been in recent years. We can accommodate a total of 35 attendees; each with a full table (subject to some generous souls bringing along some extra tables) and room to move in-between. Spouses and partners (provided they don't have their own interest in vintage computers) can attend free of charge and without being included in the 35 attendee limit.

Booking will open on 3 October 2020 in a separate thread. Any booking requests placed in this thread will be ignored.

[BigEd]

Nice! Please bump this a week or so before you open the booking thread.

[JudgeBeeb]

Nice! Please bump this a week or so before you open the booking thread.

Will do.

[LordVaderUK]

Thank you. It's in the diary, and I'll be there to finally meet some of you!

[roland]

I'll save the date! Just because this might be the last "easy" trip to the UK. So I had a look how to travel from London Stansted to the Ely...

Excuse me .... 4 hours and 40 minutes ? By car it will take only 6 hours from home ....

I might consider taking my car with me

[BigEd]

I'm seeing two and a half hours, but that's not impressive.
https://traintimes.org.uk/SSD/wokingham ... 2020-03-20

[Prime]

All things being equal I should hopefully be able to be there.

Cheers.

Phill.

[markjw]

I'll save the date! Just because this might be the last "easy" trip to the UK. So I had a look how to travel from London Stansted to the Ely...

Roland - I am planning to travel there to drop off the bits & pieces that were offered to members by Mel_P - I'm right by a tube station in West London and could give you a lift - Stansted Express to Liverpool St station, Central Line to South Ruislip which should be around 1h40m total

Mark

[BeebMaster]

Blackwater is the nearest railway station to the Ely, although it doesn't help the journey from Stansted much.

However if you could fly to Gatwick (assuming that there will still be such a thing as air travel by then) there's a direct train taking slightly over an hour to Blackwater (assuming there will still be such a thing as rail travel by then) which is a couple of miles from the Ely (assuming there will still be such a thing as the hospitality industry by then).

[1024MAK]

I'll save the date! Just because this might be the last "easy" trip to the UK. So I had a look how to travel from London Stansted to the Ely...

Excuse me .... 4 hours and 40 minutes ? By car it will take only 6 hours from home ....

I might consider taking my car with me

A couple of things to keep in mind: The railway companies have not yet agreed the ‘Winter 2020/2021” timetable so no site can give you details of any actual trains for November and Google is not always that good at finding the best route when it involves public transport especially with regards to train travel.

I use www.nationalrail.co.uk (this website is run by the U.K. train operators, I don’t necessarily recommend buying tickets from this site, always shop around). Use the post code to find a selection of stations that are ‘near’ the venue.

Based on the current timetable, depending on the time of day, travel by train is between 2 hours 18 minutes and 2 hours 53 minutes. It may be possible to reduce this at the expense of a station further from the venue.

Nearest railway stations

Mark

[Dave Footitt]

Great venue - will try and get to this again this year

[flynnjs]

So I had a look how to travel from London Stansted to the Ely...

If anyone wants to fly in/out of Stansted then I should be able to give them a free lift.
Hopefully Kees will vouch that my driving isn't too worrysome

[roland]

Thanks Jason, I'll keep that in mind. Flying to Stansted is quite easy from my place.

[mattyj]

It will be good to meet and play retro computing.

[JudgeBeeb]

Given the latest developments with the pandemic, it is clear that this event cannot go ahead and have taken the sad decision to cancel it.

As soon as things improve sufficiently to allow a physical event to proceed safely and lawfully, I will arrange to fix some new dates.

[JudgeBeeb]

I hope you are well, don't worry about cancelling I already thought that would probably be the case and totally understand, we would probably have had to cancel it anyway even if you had wanted to go ahead due to the current restrictions imposed on us.

I will look forward to hearing from you when everything has blown over as you and your ABUG club will always be welcome at The Ely.

[1024MAK]

Let’s hope that a working vaccine comes out of all the medical work that is going on, so that populations can be protected from this horrible COVID19 Corona virus and we don’t have to have the current restrictions on gatherings.

That’s a nice reply from the Ely. Once the current restrictions are lifted and it’s safe and legal to hold an ABug meeting, it will be nice to meet up again.

Thanks to JudgeBeeb both for all his efforts in the past and for being on the ball with the arrangements for future ABug South meet-ups.

Mark

[Dave Footitt]

I'd like to echo what Mark says above. The Ely is a fantastic venue and I'm really looking forward to a time when we can get back there.

[Diminished]

Boy, am I tired of this.

[danielj]

It will pass, we'll be beebing proper again within the year