This happens to me quite a bit at weekend with Yeovilton. Tend to make blind calls, stay at 3000' or so and will see no-one. Then one sunday I went up with my brother who was stationed there and after getting no one on radar, we tried the tower and got a response immediatley informing us they had a four ship recovery later on.
So the moral of the story is just because they don't answer on VHF, doesn't mean they're all in the bar.