I am pleased to announce that booking is now open for the next in person ABUG South.
Venue
The event will take place from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th April 2023 at The Ely, London Road, Blackwater, CAMBERLEY, Hampshire, GU17 9LJ.
The venue is a combined hotel and pub/restaurant. We have been there a number of times now and the feedback for this venue has been very positive. The meeting room is just off the bar. We have always been impressed with the food. As a Chef & Brewer it has a new menu. But this is still the same kind of hearty pub food we have been used to. They are still doing a Sunday roast too with similar opportunities to over-indulge.
The meeting room is ideal for our purposes. The official capacity is 110 (although I think that is perhaps a bit sporting). At the previous ABUG South events, we have been comfortably able to accommodate 35 attendees with a full table each and plenty of room to pass between tables. This is, however, somewhat contingent on people being kind enough to bring a few extra tables. The hotel has recently invested in some extra tables. But we could still do with about 4 or 5 extra tables.
Travel
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 which are less than 10 minutes by car (and, as usual, I am sure that there will be volunteers to do pick-ups). They are just branch line stations but are easily accessible from Reading, London Paddington and London Waterloo. It is about a half hour drive from Heathrow Airport.
How to book a place
Places will be subject to a charge of £15 per head (although I am not planning on taking any money until much closer to the time). The £15 charge covers the cost of the meeting room together with as much tea, coffee, fizzy pop and unhealthy snacks as you can consume.
If you wish to reserve a place, please post in the thread below or send me a PM, either through the forum or via Facebook. (I can be found in the Acorn Computer and BBC Micro Enthusiasts section as 'Justin Nathan'.)
If you do not take one of the above steps, you will not have a place. In particular, it is not sufficient to click 'going' in the Facebook event page.
Booking a hotel room
One sad side effect of the rebranding of the venue is a significant increase in the price of hotel rooms. In the current economic climate, I am not sure the room rate represents good enough value for money. (Although, they do seem to sell out in any event, which makes it difficult to negotiate a discount, particularly when the price we are given for the function room is so generously low.)
In addition, there is a wedding taking place on the weekend in question at a different, but nearby, venue and many of the wedding guests are staying at the hotel. This means that the hotel is now heavily booked on the Friday night, with just two rooms available for the full weekend. Room booking is available here.
There are, however, a number of other hotels nearby, including a Travelodge which is 3.2 miles away and charges £100.98 £102.98 £101.98 £103.98 £111.98 £127.98 £133.98 £139.98 £145.98 £127.98 £123.98 £149.98 £143.98 for the two nights. Another Travelodge charges £84.98 £87.98 £93.98 £81.98 £89.98 £90.98 £98.98 £112.98 £104.98 for the two nights and is 5.4 miles away. There is also a Premier Inn which is 3.3 miles away and is charging £102.50 £104.00 £121.50 £119.50 £121.50 £133.50 £135.50 for the two nights. I will keep an eye on room availability and pricing and post updates on this thread.
What happens at ABUG
Acorn & BBC Micro User Group (ABUG) events are open to enthusiasts of the BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, Atom and Archimedes/RISC OS machines. Attendees will typically stay for two if not all three days. The events are always very informal and can involve:
- attendees bringing their own hardware to set up and show off
- time spent working on hardware and programming/games projects
- exchange of ideas/knowledge
- upgrade and repair of poorly Acorn machines
- collaborative work on community projects, such as software preservation, preparation/planning for displays at other events etc.
- sale of items by members (not guaranteed, but there are often opportunities to buy bits)
- general socialising, food/drink and the odd hi-score competition!
- Important! Ensure that any hardware you bring that features the RIFA/paper-type capacitors with a tendency to go POP (e.g. Beebs) have had the caps changed! We can't risk setting any smoke alarms off as that may incur charges!
Enthusiasts of other platforms are also welcome. In the past we have seen people bringing along vintage systems from:
- Apple
- Commodore
- Sinclair
- Dragon
- Vectrex
- Amstrad
Rules
There are very few rules:
- no hot food is to be consumed at the venue other than that which is purchased from the bar/restaurant
- no alcoholic drinks are to be consumed at the venue other than that which is purchased from the bar/restaurant
- see below regarding children
- the hotel is a snake-free venue; please do not bring any snakes to the event
ABUG meetings are not child friendly events because of the following:
- there is not often a lot to engage the interest of very young children
- people working with hot soldering stations
- people working with potentially toxic substances (lead, IPA)
- people working with exposed mains (and higher) voltages
- large amounts of electrical cabling representing potential trip hazards
- lots of fragile, expensive and sometimes rare equipment
If, however, children become a risk to themselves or others, they will have to leave.
New members
We are particularly keen for new members of the forum to attend these events. You do not need to ‘join’ anything to come along. You do not need to have attended previously or being active on Stardot or on the Facebook group. You do not need to be working on developing a Cray 1 second processor for the Beeb or porting Crysis to the Acorn Atom. You just need to be interested in vintage technology.
We are a friendly bunch and we will make sure you feel welcome. If you have any questions or uncertainty about the event, please feel free to PM me (either on this forum or using Facebook Messenger - I can be found in the Acorn Computer and BBC Micro Enthusiasts section as 'Justin Nathan').
Partners
Many people bring their partners to these events. They are all very welcome. Those of you who are lucky enough to have a partner who is genuinely involved in the retro-computing scene, will have to secure and pay for a separate place for your partner. But those partners who just attend to socialise are welcome free of charge and without needing to take-up one of the places.
Confirmed
- JudgeBeeb (Robert) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- Arcadian (Dave) - Saturday and Sunday (and maybe late Friday too) - Paid
- tricky (Richard) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- MattH (Matt) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- Soruk (Michael) - Saturday and Sunday - Paid
- Dave Footitt (Dave) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- dudleysoft71 (James) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- kieranhj (Kieran) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- IanS (Ian) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- sbadger (Stewart) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- inky (Mark) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- 1024MAK (Mark) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- gfoot (George) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- tom_seddon (Tom) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- mattyj (Matt) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- daveejhitchins (Dave) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- gavinlew (Gavin) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- z0m8ied0g (Stephen) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- helpful (Bryan) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- flibble (Peter) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- chrisn (Chris) - Friday and Saturday - Paid
- VectorEyes (Adrian) - arriving Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday afternoon - Paid
- Paul (Paul) - Sunday only - To pay on the day
- Trelach (Ian) - Saturday only - To pay on the day
- sixxdog_uk (Alex) - Arriving Saturday am, leaving Sunday pm - Paid
- Anobium (Evan) - Friday and Sunday - Paid
