Consequences of obsession with rules

The Met Office issued a Yellow Warning for unseasonally high winds for the past two days on the South Coast. My pitch is very exposed to the wind but my booking is for 9 days and the awning is fully set up for dining, cooking and bike storage.

Without casing any inconvenience to other members, and fully maintaining the 6m fire gap, I attempted to protect our 1075cm awning from storm damage, until the storm passed, by parking inches from the front of the awning. I explained this to a warden who initially queried the fire gap but I assured him I personally measured and was confident in adhering to fire regs.

Some time later, the same warden returned with another and told me I needed to move my car because it was “breaching fire regs” I reminded them I measured the gap and in response, the other warden stated I could not have any wheels on grass, apparently oblivious to the pitch opposite parking their car with one set of wheels on grass and of course, there are grass pitches with cars parked anyway so this is a ludicrous explanation.

I asked them to be reasonable, to acknowledge the potential and very real risk of a wrecked awning and assured them I would move the car as soon as the storm passed.

To my utter astonishment, the other warden suddenly said she would ask me to leave unless I moved the car!

Highlighting the storm warning from the Met Office, I asked them if they were fully aware of the risk of damage to my awning but this fell on deaf ears. With the alternative of packing up in high winds and risking driving unnecessarily, I moved my car.

As a direct consequence to this now familiar obsession with Club rules and total inflexibility, my awning was badly damaged, torn and I now face a 4hr round trip in the morning to have emergency repairs done by Isabella. Isabella were excellent with true customer focus and said they will turn the repairs around in one week.

What would you have done and what would you now do regarding the damaged awning? I phoned East Grinstead for advice before the damage was done. They were sympathetic but unable to help.