BFS Pendle Expedition
The BFS Pendle Expedition was a fan gathering held over Whitsun 1943 (Saturday June 12 to Monday June 14). It arose when Ron Lane, Ron Bradbury and George Ellis of Manchester planned to visit Leeds and learned that R. Rowland Johnson and Donald Houston had the same idea. They asked J. Michael Rosenblum to arrange accommodation, but Rosenblum fancied a holiday himself so relocated the gathering to his mother's bungalow at Higherford, near Nelson in Lancashire. All were members of the British Fantasy Society
Rosenblum described it in Futurian War Digest #29:
On the whole things went very well. Meals were prepared decently in spite of numerous phobias on the part of the fans – one a vegetarian, one doesn't drink tea, one won't touch custard, one insists on cornflakes and nothing else for breakfast – and so on. Sleeping was a bit of a problem but it was managed, those fans who firewatch being already broken in to sleeping in peculiar positions and conditions. But the piece de resistance was undoubtedly a walk of several miles across country, the ascent of Pendle Hill, and the return; a record (long) time of 5 hours 20 minutes being taken for the performance. Pendle is not a mountain by some few feet, but it rises quite steeply from a valley and our super-men found it quite hard going, scrambling up amongst the waist deep bracken and over stony paths. It was compared unfavourably by our intrepid travellers with the Martian and Venerian territory they were apparently so familiar with.
Discussion encompassed the idea of a British Fantasy Amateur Press Association and plans for future fan meetings.
By the standards of the day it could easily have been regarded as a convention but seemingly none of the participants viewed it as such.
There was a similar gathering over Whitsun 1944 with many of the same people.
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| 1943 |
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