The week before the bank-holiday weekend I received an email from The Camber Community Newsletter. It said: "There is much unrest among villagers about this (visitor numbers not abiding by the guidelines) especially with the warm weather forecast for the weekend. The Chairman of the Parish Council has today contacted the statutory authorities about these concerns and hopefully we will get some police here over the weekend to deal with it all".
This is a gut reaction from the villagers to the onslaught of visitors that we get, especially during the summer season. It can be of frightening proportions with the sheer numbers trying to park.
Thankfully the police did rally around and although the numbers of out of towners was not high, they dealt with the ones that did travel into the area in a professional manner. I asked around and here are a few observations.
A group of nine getting out of three cars, with ball and picnic. This was at the west end of the village by Farm Lane. A suggestion was made that as they were not speaking English, perhaps they did not understand the gravity of the situation, but I think that is not so.
A police patrol went down Old Lydd Road one evening and questioned people to ask if they were local. This resident thanked the police.
A few more were seen with the presumption that they were from London.
We would like to thank the police for an excellent role of keeping the local inhabitants safer, for sure.
But I would ask too if it would be possible to make a small effort to protect Camber inhabitants from the marauding hordes that treat our village like an enormous parking lot, illegal or not. Limiting numbers would be an excellent start during the heavy summer periods.
