The children of Jan Ubels, Marleen and Jos, can call themselves the managers of TT camping Ubels this year. The construction of the campsite has started today and brother and sister Ebels expect more than 750 sleeping guests.
“The family has been doing this for sixty years,” Jos says about the TT camping site, which he and his sister are opening this year in Graswijk, south of Assen. “We have all the materials, all the gear. So for us it’s a well-oiled machine that is slowly getting going for the TT.” For Marleen and Jos, few new things are involved. In their youth they already helped father Jan at the campsite.
In 1962 Jan Ubels received the first camping guests. Sixty years later, the managers are new and the Ubels family also had to find a new place after 25 years, because it was no longer possible to keep the campsite on the Europaweg. “The municipality has had concerns about nature and the like at several fields in Assen where there were campsites, managed by Het Drentse Landschap. We had to switch very quickly from the municipality. We don’t want to make a drama out of that.”
Jos speaks of entrepreneurial blood in the family that just keeps flowing. “If you organize a TT race with 100,000 guests for a weekend, you have to be able to accommodate it as a city,” he says. “Spending the night belongs at a TT campsite, which has its own entourage. All motorcyclists with the same passion.”
And Jos Ubels knows how to get the right atmosphere at such a TT campsite. “You shouldn’t act as a police officer,” he says. “You have to do something with the dedication to motorsport and ultimately give those guests a nice weekend. It is no longer like the old days when everyone leaves the tent up. People are more careful with their stuff. That saves us a lot of cleaning up.”