Drive it Day and other things

Well a lots happened since my last entry, my wife and I have been away on a cruise around the West Indies, The Spitfire passed its MOT with Flying Colours and we've had our Drive it Day run. Before I get onto that, as a Stag owner, I was pleasantly surprised by this sign in St Kitts. And I thought when driving a Stag, any hour was happy hour! Anyway, onto last Sundays excursion, as it was Drive it Day, our local TSSC area, West Kent had a run out in support of it.

Our start point was our regular monthly meeting place at the Cock Horse in Hildenborough, 13 cars in total turned up, a Stag, Hurricane, GT6, Bond Equipe convertible, 4 Vitesses, 3 Spitfires and 2 Herald 13/60’s. A quiz was handed out requiring an element of observation through the day to complete.

We started out at about 10.15, and were videoed leaving the pub by a friend of one of our members – these have now been put on Youtube at :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RAB35N0cjI

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QAxWOvxvOw&feature=related

We proceeded to our first stop at the Yalding Organic Gardens for a brief coffee and comfort break.

After about 30 minutes we left and started on the biggest leg of our journey to the Bodiam Castle Inn where some members had a pub lunch whilst others tucked into their picnics.

The run to Bodiam was along some lovely roads taking in the Kent orchards, currently in full bloom. – we were late arriving there due to traffic, roadworks etc, which meant we would miss meeting the Canterbury Area at our next stop, Chapel Down Vineyard at Smallhythe. The ride to here was great fun with some nice fast sweeping corners for the adventurous ones. A short stop ensued whilst some members bought some of the fine wines and produce for sale here.

A short drive then brought us to Biddenden Vineyard, a well known producer of Cider and wines, and more importantly, free sampling! More purchases were made, and then it was off to Headcorn Airfield for our final stop, where we managed to park up in a nice orderly row of fine examples of Triumph’s best!

Apparently we missed our Canterbury Area colleagues by about 30 minutes – they had gone to a pub half a mile away but we didn’t find out until the following day.

Overall the weather was excellent, all the cars performed faultlessly and everyone enjoyed it, the quiz was a tight finish with Steve and Tina Gordon winning first prize, second was Alan and Carol Beal, and Malcolm Wing and his wife came in Third.

For the technically minded this is what my Sat Nav recorded

65 miles total run
Max Speed 50.4mph
Moving average speed 29.5mph
Moving time 2 hrs 12 mins
Total Journey time 5 hrs 1 min, - this meant before we got to Headcorn, we were stopped for 2 hrs 49 minutes

And now the icing on the cake, I've just booked the ferry for Club Triumphs 10 Countries Run in September!