Stanford Hall is a stately home built in the time of William & Mary, it’s located near Lutterworth in the UK and is the location for the Leicestershire and Warwickshire VW owners club’s annual Volkswagen show. This year’s show took place on Sunday 1st July having been postponed from May due to bad weather and was blessed by some sunshine during a day of dark clouds.

I arrived early as my oval window beetle was to form part of the Historic VW display in front of the main house which is organised by the Historic VW Club each year. You get in for free if you take part in the display so it’s a good incentive to register and bring your VW along! There was a good turn out for the display this year including several military VWs, Split window and oval bugs and quite a few in the recently added pre 1960 line up.

I parked up and took a wonder around the show armed with my camera. After a walk through some of the vast array of trade stands, I headed for the VWs for sale area. I real mix of Volkswagens were on offer from a very nice 1955 Devon Camper right up to T4 campers and new beetles, with just about everything in between. Other VWs that caught my eye were a red 1965 beetle called Ruby which was an ex-concourse winner which was now for sale and a very low blue single-cab splitscreen pickup.

Past a few more trade stands was the concourse area where everyone was busy cleaning and polishing before judging started later in the morning. The ’67 beige Beetle of Rob Evens was looking perfect to me and a strong contender for an award this year. Matt Lancaster, Known as ‘Baron Von Kronken’ had bought along both of his busses, a sign-written panel van and his very original 1956 Krankenwagen VW ambulance. One thing I did notice was the number of razor-edge Karmann Ghias which are surfacing at the moment. Another VW worth a mention was the 1950 Karmann Cabriolet owned by Russell Ritchie from Scotland. Russell had only decided at the last minute to bring his cabrio along to the show and I’m glad he did! It’s always nice to see the rarer VWs being brought out for people to admire. It seems that all of the restoration projects are finishing at the same time! The Split Screen were there in force as usual with long lines of  vans, every colour, model and height you could care to imagine.

All in all another great show, and a Sunday well spent. I’m sure I’ll be back in 2013 again for what many regard as one of the best VW shows on the UK calendar. Well done to all involved.