Damp Start At Lavenham Classic

Bank holiday weekend here in the UK, I could have had a car show on Saturday, Sunday and the Monday a hat trick. I didn’t attend the show yesterday as the rain was forecast and sure enough it did, not a lot, but just enough to make me not get the car out. Considering we’ve had three ‘heat waves’ in the UK now, I wasn’t upset about missing one show to be fair. Todays show was at a beautiful village of Lavenham in the middle of Suffolk about half hour away from me. My alarm, woke me, the dogs and the wife. Before I got out from my pit, I checked the weather, rain was due at four this afternoon. OK, I decided to go and leave a bit early to miss the promised rain. I stumbling out of bed and seemed to stand on every dog toy between the bedroom and bathroom. I took a careful look at the sky and the roads, they were damp with the odd puddle.

I got in the car and set the destination in Google maps. My co-pilot was going to direct me down some back roads, that wasn’t going to happen as I know these roads. The route would have been quite wet as the roads aren’t used that much early on a Sunday morning. So on one of my (very) rare occasions, I overrode the map and turned onto the main roads instead. My route would be six minutes longer to get there, but these are main roads and would be used. That way the water would be removed much quicker by traffic and the sun trying to poke through the clouds, which means my car wouldn’t get as dirty on the way there. The show was due to start at eleven until four, with the event letting in cars at eight thirty. My timing saw me arrive at nine twenty and I was shown to the field for the marshal on the gate. The display field is arranged into a circles with outer ring for some club stands, and then inner circle(s) for the private entrants. I parked up next to a white Triumph and a couple of minutes later a white Morris Minor turned up. I was in a white car sarnie. I wasn’t best pleased about the ‘Moggy Minor’ as there is some history between me and their owners club! I have documented it here quite a bit in the past.

My car got a good wipe over, which surprising wasn’t that bad. You can see from the picture above, the field behind me was quite empty. By the time the car was cleaned some forty minutes later the field was getting busy. It was going to be a good show.

The marshals were great and kept everything moving and parked us up quickly, but not wedged us together, a refreshing experience it has to be said.

I could smell food, there was an army truck that pulled into the middle of the field which was serving hotdogs. I asked for one only to be told that everything he had was vegan, I put my money away and looked for other vendors. Now, I don’t know it was my imagination or not, but the vegan van had a few people queue up at one point, but the bacon stand which was only selling bacon rolls, had a constant queue of people waiting in a line. I didn’t fancy the bacon although it did smell amazing. There was nobody else selling hotdogs, so I had to settle for a burger. Not a cheap experience, but I was assured it was a proper burger. As it was nearly mid day I talked myself into it which took all of about two seconds. The burgers were cooked to order and I would have to wait for my order! The waiting time was mitigated by giving me a gadget with a number on it. When it bleeped and flashed I was to go and get my burger.

What a fantastic idea and it worked, I handed my gadget over, got my burger and promptly returned to my car and sat down to enjoy my lunch. They were right it was a pretty good burger, better than some restaurants I have been too.

While I was waiting I decided to wander around the cars and take some photos, so working counter clockwise here are the cars.

I’m a bit partial to a Lotus Cortina, not many around now and certainly not in this sort of amazing condition.

This Corvette was stunning, with brown on brown. I’ve no idea what the colour is, but on a Mustang it looks like ‘Ember Glow’. If you know what this colour is please let me know.

This MkII Jag was a bit special. The owner had done loads to it, bored and cranked the engine, now running the best part of four hundred BHP. He had dropped in a BMW five speed manual gearbox, limited slip and lots of other goodies. It looked like a ‘Coombs’ conversion (the hood vents are the give away), but it wasn’t, but it could well have been. To see a manual in Jag is something else, let alone a BMW conversion. It could quite easily have gotten my car of the show.

Mart’s Car Of The Show:

This 1951 Daimler DB18. It wasn’t pristine, but it was just glorious to look at. Would I want to drive it around for the day, oh yes.

To finish up there was some furry friends out for the day, and these little guys were all well behaved and wasn’t to hot for them either.

I left about an hour before the show was due to finish to avoid a rush to leave and avoid the predicted rain. Spolier alert – it didn’t rain! When I managed to get onto the main road to make my way through Lavenham village there was another event on as well for an Arts & Crafts fair. The parking left a lot to be desired should we say, with people just dumping cars without consideration to anybody else. At one point I had right of way as the obstruction was on the other person’s side of the road, but a typical BMW driver was adamant on reinforcing their terrible driving reputation, forced me to stop and pull into a gap to let them past. The old bloke driving looked like he couldn’t see past his hood, let alone the road! There were people driving like complete morons looking around instead of looking at where they were going. A few of those fellow road users were on the receiving end of a few naughty words from me, even with my window fully down. By the time I got home I was mentally drained.

I spoke to lots of lovely people today. The general public were on good behaviour around the cars and was nice to see for change. I even let a couple of great guys; Paul and Roger who were talking to me for ages sit in my car too. A great show today, if no rain tomorrow I will be at another show.