A great 'Drive It' day
The winter weather conspired to foil our earlier plans for this year, so it was great to finally meet up with friends from Wye Dean, together with some from Glavon on Sunday 22nd April for the 'Drive It' day. Alan Barker had devised a route starting from Ross, picking up more in Gloucester, before setting off for Prinknash Abbey which is in a beautiful setting - here, 20+ of us enjoyed a leisurely coffee break before setting off for the Tyndale monument - a very impressive tower erected to commemorate William Tyndale who was martyred for translating the New Testament into English, so making it accessible to ordinary folk, and drastically reducing the hold of the clergy & hierarchy on the populace. A rather muddy track & a clamber over a fallen tree lead us onto the plateau and the tower, giving us fabulous views out over the Bristol channel and the surrounding area.
Back into the cars, with admiring glances from onlookers as the we took off for our next & final stop at the Bristol Aerospace Museum at Filton. It was impossible to keep together for this last leg of the journey, as we wound our way through Cotswold villages and towns, but eventually 16 of us made it to this very impressive museum in 2 TR4s, 1 TR4a, 4 TR6s, 1 TR7 and Caroline's lovely Crossfire. (hope I haven't left anyone out!) . The displays are really impressive, and of course, the star of the show is the Concorde - it's such a fabulous plane, & such a shame it had to be taken out of service. Dick had photos he'd taken as a young 'un of the Brabazon, and was pleased to get into conversation with one of the staff who gives regular talks about that plane - he in turn was very pleased to be able to keep the photos.
And so a superb day drew to a close - sincere thanks to Alan & Kathy for planning & leading the event.
...........and a 'post script' from Kevin & Carol Nichols...................
"We had an interesting drive home after last night's meeting.
When I got in the car at Harewood End the headlights failed to come on.
A bit of tinkering under the dashboard got them working.
Got just beyond the Three Horseshoes at Allensmore when they packed in completely refusing to be fixed.
I then tried the headlight flash which worked so we drove to Builth holding the headlights on with the flash switch, that got us 40 miles up the road just past the showground ( 8 miles from home)and we were thrown into darkness again.
We were not far from a lay-by so we parked up and hunkered down for a nights kip. Not very comfortable in a TR and by 3:00 am we were both awake and cold.
At 3:50 am the traffic was virtually non-existent so when a van came by I got going and hung on his tail on the bypass using his headlights as a guide.
The last 4 miles from Newbridge we were on our own again and risked driving on our sidelights (assuming all the police would be tucked up in bed at that time) and arrived home safely at 4:15am.
The wiring circuit on my car has been modified at some point using non-standard wiring colours so I am now on a race against time to get the car road legal for the Concorde trip.
Oh the fun of TR ownership."