Sorry - I'm out. We've got a triathlon event at work. I'm not taking part (hell no!) but I'll need to be onsite to support the tills etc.
:(
Morat wrote:
Sorry - I'm out. We've got a triathlon event at work. I'm not taking part (hell no!) but I'll need to be onsite to support the tills etc.
:(
Thanks for letting me know and sorry for putting moray on the list, thanks iPhone!
So who's still going then?
I can’t make it now. Work has got in the way.
So did we get club entry or have we got to book in ourselves?
Who is still up for it anyway as it might be worth meeting up somewhere outside and arriving in style.....
Club Entry was going to cost almost £200 for insurance so not worth it this year
Does seem a bit steep. I meant to ask my daughter's boyfriend as he's in insurance but it all went quiet. With club entry we would have got our own parking area and as we don't have a club as such, then it would have been a bit odd.
Looking at this https://www.thebillingoffroadexperience.co.uk/world-record-attempt/ it appears it's £8 for a day and another fiver to enter the world record attempt. So who's going?
Anyone? Or is it just me and my mate in his soft dash Classic LSE?
I'm not sure if anyone else was there but there was a distinct lack of P38s. At least 80% were either Defenders or Discos, a few newer ones, a few RR Classics and I didn't see more than about 10 P38s if that. There was me, Paul, a neighbour of mine that now owns OldShep's Vogue, one of the CVC cars which was a factory demonstrator kitted out for police forces restored in full police livery (the owner asked if I intended restoring mine to original police livery but as I said to him, doing 25,000 miles a year it wouldn't really be practical, I use my car, not show it), a red HSE in the camp site and a couple of others. Unlike mine which was a special order and built by LR Special Vehicles to the specific requirements of GMP when they ordered it, the CVC cars were standard HSE spec taken from the production line and used as demonstrators for press, dealers and anyone else.
The convoy attempt was errm, interesting. It was supposed to start at 5pm and it may have done at the front but it was 6:30 before we started to move. The pic shows the cars that had completed the 3 mile course and were lining up in the finish field when we were only just starting out and hadn't even reached the Start marker yet.
I've not seen anything to say if the record set by the Germans (632 assorted Land and Range Rovers) was beaten but as we approached the start I was given a numbered wristband with 890 on it so if I was number 890 in the convoy, there must have been over 100 more cars behind me. Leading the convoy was the original 1948 Land Rover prototype and the restored police P38 followed up at the rear with all his lights switched on. Or at least he was until they managed to get an ex-Army Land Rover ambulance started and he tagged on the back. Whether the record attempt will stand or not I've no idea. The rules said that there should be no more than a two car lengths between each car but at times there was much more than that, 40 mph on a dirt track trying to catch up with the rest of the convoy when the dust kicked up by the Defender in front meant you couldn't actually see the track certainly proved the EAS although the new air filter I'd fitted the previous day probably needs changing again now. The AC came in handy though, the guy in the Defender in front drove most of the route holding his door open trying to keep cool!
I did think about coming up (its only 1/2 hour from me to Billing) but ended up instead spending this weekend troubleshooting brake issues and replacing the other coil pack instead (and would have been a Disco anyway, so wouldn't have helped on the p38 front).
Given I have no A/C on that, and brakes that have started to disappear (Think the master cylinder has had it, and now awaiting delivery of bits to sort that) the idea of the convoy really didn't appeal to me.
No AC would have been a very bad idea. It was 30 degrees and you don't get much airflow at walking pace. At one point we passed one of the course marshals who was dripping in sweat and losing a battle against a swarm of flies that had mistaken his safety jacket for a very large yellow flower. As we were one of the few cars driving around with all the windows shut, he made a comment about us being cold so Dina opened the window to let him feel the air from the vents. We very nearly picked up a passenger.....