Billing Aquadrome Press release, No Longer holding Car Shows

[mjphotography2016]

Taken fromt there facebook page "After a full review of the events calendar at Billing Aquadrome, we regret to announce that we will no longer be hosting car show events after this year. Unfortunately we will no longer be able to accommodate these shows to a satisfactory level due to re-organisation.
We are however, very pleased to announce that we are putting all of our efforts into organising family focussed events; which we are all very excited about and we hope that all of our guests will be too!
This will start in the October next half term holiday, when we will have Planet Circus on site from Wednesday 26th – Sunday 30th October.
We are also very pleased that Northampton Balloon festival will be returning to Billing Aquadrome from 18th – 19th – 20th August 2017."


www.facebook.com/BillingAquadrome/?fref=nf

[retrolegends]

Gutted by this news and I think it's a big mistake on the new owners part tbh, been to every NSRA Fun Run with the wife and kids for the last seven years, it's always been a great weekend and has been held since 1972. if that's not a family event I don't know what is!
I think it's destined to be a housing estate in the not too distant future.

[comfortablynumb]

A friend who's a trader has been told that the Land Rover show is moving to a farm site as of next year, i can't remember the name of it but when i get hold of him I'll post it, maybe some of the others will relocate there too

[MrSpeedy]

Sept 30, 2016 15:32:07 GMT retrolegends said:

I think it's destined to be a housing estate in the not too distant future.

I can't see it being a very popular one, what with the constant smell of sh1t from the neighbouring sewage plant!

I can't see this being a good thing for them at all, especially off the back of some recent scathing reviews about the place that have been doing the rounds on Facebook.

I've only ever been to Billing for car shows, now I won't have any reason at all to go there!

[retrolegends]

What's going to happen to the Raleigh Chopper and Custom Bike Show kevfromwales? Any word from Kaiser Bill about this?

[Thrasher]

I've never been to Billing, looks like I never will.

However - a local sewage plant won't stop a housing estate being built - nor several thousand people moving into it.

[MrSpeedy]

Sept 30, 2016 18:22:41 GMT Thrasher said:

I've never been to Billing, looks like I never will.

However - a local sewage plant won't stop a housing estate being built - nor several thousand people moving into it.

I can assure you that it would stop me!

Billing does seem to be particularly ripe. 😷

[Ryannn]

Sept 30, 2016 18:39:43 GMT MrSpeedy said:

Sept 30, 2016 18:22:41 GMT Thrasher said:

I've never been to Billing, looks like I never will.

However - a local sewage plant won't stop a housing estate being built - nor several thousand people moving into it.

I can assure you that it would stop me!

Billing does seem to be particularly ripe. 😷

They're in the process of building one on a flood plain near me! Building was paused over Xmas because the entire place was 6ft underwater!

[chrism1]

Billing plan to add 30+ log cabins and glamping style accommodation to bring it in line with more high profile places such as centre parks.

[bortaf]

Sewage plants stop nothing the largest one in N london is next to a camp site/olympic park and thousands of houses, right stinks up the place on a hot summers day
What will most likely happen is people will move in knowing full well there is a sewage plant next door then they will complane about it and get it shut down cos some tospot judge cant see what curse word they were for moving there in the first place or maybe that only happens with race tracks ??

[colnerov]

I can't say I'm surprised as there are fixed caravans with people living in them semi permanently and if they are building log cabins and trying to raise the image for a glamping site. They're not going to want those noisy, smelly specialist car groups driving round the site and thousands of visitors watching them do it. It's a shame really.

Colin

[fr€$h&m1nt¥]

I've not been to a car show there since 2003 but the ones I went to seemed to be plagued by travellers trying to rob the traders tents.

[daslandroverman]

I can only comment on it as a venue for Land Rover shows, but from what I've seen there's other car groups think similarly...

As a show venue it's been past its best for a good ten years or more.
The Billing Land Rover show was washed out 2 years in a row due to the sites location and adverse weather, yet still people keep going back.

LRO magazine -the original organisers of the L-R shows there- realised it was no longer the best place for it about 15 years ago and moved their show to Stoneleigh instead, with more than a few happy to see Billing was dead, until a month or two later when one of the other Land Rover magazines decided to take advantage of the 'goodwill' associated with the site and organise a show there instead.
This continued until they were bought out by a different publisher, and their Land Rover magazine kept it going another few years until they reached the same conclusion as LRO several years previously and decided to move their show to Newark showground, after which someone else jumped on the bandwagon to milk yet more money out if it.
Personally I'm glad it's now actually going to die off as a show venue.

Asides the over zealous site security, and the flooding, there has been more and more anti social behaviour, and increasing amounts of crime, examples cited include a group of about 8 guys trying to carry off a brand new chassis from one of the trade stands (foiled as there was an -unnoticed- chap sleeping in a chair about 6 feet from it) and indeed attempts to steal vehicles from club stands in the middle of the night.

My last visit to the place coincided with a Land Rover show, but for the amount of time I -and a fair majority of the 20 plus group I was camping with- spent actually looking round the show we'd have been cheaper, less likely to be robbed, and had just as good a time at pretty much any other campsite in the country.
The event at Newark the next year was much better, just a shame that show only lasted the one year.

Anyways. Billing is dead. I hope it stays that way.

[retrolegends]

Shame to hear all of the above comments about bad experiences, the Fun Run is the only show we do (well did!) and we have never had a problem, probably due to us camping in Puddleduck with the Raleigh Bike show, mud has always been an issue but we have come to accept it.
I've always thought of it as a camping experience from the '70s just like the Fun Run is a show rooted in the '70s.
My kids are proper gutted they won't be going back and so am I tbh.

[retrolegends]

Allow me if you will to share some memories of the last few years.

[59impala]

Ah Billing events, loads of memories some of which are printable! I first started going there for the NSRA Fun Run back in the mid 70s and then for the AAC shows. I haven't been there for some years but it seemed by stuff what I read that the place was going downhill and indeed underwater, it being on a flood plain. They will lose a lot of revenue from the car shows but hopefully those shows will find new homes elsewhere at sites where the owners actually welcome paying customers.

[guinnal]

Never been to Billing but some of those pics bring back memories. I have photos of both those minis taken at Silverstone at Mini 30th birthday in 1989. I remember the yellow one from a show in Scotland around 1981. Cheers

[darrenh]

VBOA had been looking for a new venue for the annual rally since 2011. asside from camping rates going up and the repugnant site owner curse word VBOA off, the final kick in the plums was northampton borough council crushing the auto jumble by only allowing registered traders to set up stalls. this year we had a stall selling marsh mallows and another stall selling scented candles.

bye bye billing, quack quack

[Ryannn]

I've only been once, whilst the location was fine when we went, I can repeat what's been said about theft. A few of the club stands had parts removed from cars overnight.

[Mercdan68]

Been to the national 1600e owners club events twice
Horrible place , all British holiday site owners are investing heavily in more caravans and lodges, holidaying and on site holiday home ownership are on the up
Haven where we have ours in Kent are spending big on our site, it's been very busy this year
I guess most off billings open space will hold more caravans very soon