Another trip(e)

[jimj]

Euroclassic 2012 Leon to Vichy
or the Zeebrugge to Zeebrugge Tres Mille Miglia

The entry list, at 68 cars, was well down on previous years (and 10 of those were post 1991). Our pals, too, were fewer in number this year with just 4 cars, me and Carole in the Elan, David and Hilary in their Elite, Tony and Rodger in Tony`s Healey 100/4 and Tina and Alain de Famatory in their DB5 convertible. Carole loves to navigate (nagivate?) as she gets to boss me around. She has a bottomless advice tank with a one-way valve, she can give endless advice but can`t accept any.
We were looking forward to some autumn warmth and sunshine, rallying in Spain and south western France in late September with just a couple of hours from the Plymouth to Santander ferry to the start in historic Leon. Our 3 cars were due to leave on the Saturday for Plymouth and the Sunday Brittany ferry with Alan and Tina joining us at the start having been rallying the previous week around Chinon. Chinon was the source of the first outbreak of chinonitis in 1273 and it wasn`t until the mid-sixties that the W.H.O. declared the disease to have been eradicated throughout the world. Despite that, symptoms can still be recognised in golf clubs everywhere, notably by a propensity to wear Barathea blazers and chinos.
On the Friday the MSA, who organise the event, notified us all that Brittany Ferries were on strike and we had to be prepared to take the Dover crossing, Calais being around 1000 miles from the start. Later that day all Brittany sailings were cancelled forthwith. The MSA were brilliant, organising and paying for 2 overnight hotels on the drive through France and ?250 towards petrol. But we don`t live near Dover and the clock was ticking. A hasty decision was to take the Saturday night ferry to Zeebrugge and see how far we could get in the first day, take it as it comes but we provisionally booked a hotel in Bordeaux.
With the cars fettled to better than new (?!) we met up with others in a V8 MGB and a Corvette and left the boat at 9.50 a.m. heading south in a rough convoy with the thistiest car dictating the first fuel stop. Guess which. An interesting comparison; we needed 17 litres, Tony`s Healey 27 litres, and the Corvette 37 litres despite being red, having pop up lights and being made of GRP just like the Elan.
Quick fuel stops included coffee, snacks, driver changes and toilet visits on the fly and by mid-afternoon Carole was driving the Elan looking a right bobby dazzler. There`s something very appealing about an attractive female driving a fast car, or a fast woman driving an attractive car, or, come to think about it, a woman with a hot hatch. Around 5p.m. the heavens opened, torrential downpours, and we forged on much more slowly but ever more determined to reach Bordeaux. The Corvette dropped out as its lights didn`t work, fibreglass cars, eh? but we got there at 8.50 p.m. Eleven hours of fast and difficult driving called for a group hug, a big thankyou to the cars, and a large beer. A reasonable start time with just 350 miles to go we were passing Biarritz around 10ish as Alan and Tina, the Chinonentities, were joining the same road having stayed there overnight and Tony and Rodger, out of sequence with fuel stops, met up with them by chance at lunch, how biarrar? Late afternoon in Leon, 1050 miles in 2 days make you wonder why those lightweights on the Mille Miglia for 3 days think it`s tough. Incredibly, 66 cars made the start for the next morning and the other 2 joined the next day. 100%, commendable and an object lesson to those unwilling to take their classic cars far just in case. Just in Carole`s case, the dimensions of a sea chest, was the equivalent of the stock of a reasonable size John Lewis and a shoe collection to rival that of Imelda Marcos.
The start, and we`re heading for Salamanca and the expected late summer in southern Europe felt like a cold day in a cold place only much colder with heavy rain and violent winds. It had turned out that the ferry would never have crossed the Bay of Dismay anyway so stormy were the seas. We continued to be battered by gales and directional stability is not an Elan forte in cross winds but at least wrestling with the wheel kept me warm and added interest to a dull drive on a dull road through the dreariest of landscapes. The principal, in fact only, agriculture was trying to grow dead grass, endless fields of dead grass, though Salamanca was nice once we found the hotel. We`re not inexperienced in tulip road books but we only found the very last hotel in Vichy at the very end without being lost every day. Most days, most people got lost a number of times and people who had brought satellite navigation equipment used them more and more which is disappointing. Directions were, at best, ambiguous, distances often inaccurate and complicated route changes had a number of instructions grouped together in one diagram, very confusing. The clerk of the course assured us he had checked it with his wife reading the notes but that doesn`t work if you already know where you`re going. A course car only sometimes seemed to preceed us on the route so deviations around the many road works........you get the picture.
Salamanca to Aveila, don`t bother, dull roads, motorways, bland countryside together with the bad weather, which couldn`t be helped, and we`d driven 1000 miles for this expensive trip that was nothing like previous events. We did visit an interesting monastery, the first of many which we seemed to visit, religiously, each day. Franco`s tomb in the Vale de los Caldos, only recently opened to the general public, was really fascinating but the long motorway trip in foul weather to the Hilton hotel near Madrid was awful. We got lost 4 times trying to get from the motorway to a hotel we could see. I know of at least 2 crews who got so lost they paid taxis to lead them there. We were not alone in feeling really let down and the Hilton was a triumph of style over function, flash and tacky but not.......you know.
You may be thinking I`m being more of a curmudgeon than usual but we`d all been on a number of Euroclassics which have been great. Great driving on fabulous, well researched routes and our expectations were high that this trip would be just as great and it was just, well, not . Excuses were made that in this area of Spain to get from A to B you had to use the boring roads and loads of motorways so why go from A to B? so go from C to D instead, for goodness sake. That said, well, moaned actually, we were having a great time altogether in the evenings. Especially at tea time in the hotel bar. As ever, hotel bars can`t cope with an influx of around 150 people around the same time and getting served was yet another challenge. For "challenge" read "pain in the bottom".
We had a day off to look around Madrid then more boring motorway (monotoway) to, hoorah ! the Jarama circuit. We had exclusive use of 3 circuits and the Mont Dore hillclimb to look forward to in the remaining days, excited? I should say so. It continued to rain heavily but there were only 2 small areas of standing water on the VERY slippery circuit. Carole and the luggage are normally deposited in the pit lane but I didn`t want the luggage to get wet so off we went, yes, off we went; second lap, second corner, a double 720 degree spin ending facing the right way and still moving with no damage, hilarious. I thought Carole was as amused as I was, laughter and hysteria sounding very similar. I blamed the polar moment of inertia being clothing increased. Another monastery (monotostery) in the afternoon and an overnight in Zaragoza.
Now the roads were getting better, well they couldn`t.......you know, as we headed into the Pyranees and the driving just got to be more and more what we came for, the scenery got better, the villages prettier, and even the weather improved. I think it was around this time when David`s Elite started having electrical problems. He loves fiddling under the bonnet more than anyone I`ve ever met, which is just as well. I didn`t count how many times he broke down as I don`t have that many fingers and toes but he seemed to love it. His wife, Hilary, was a star but I cringed that he might get Lotus a bad name. What happened to the oft quoted acronym LOTUS Loads Of Tripe Unfairly Scathing? Meanwhile our Elan was running as sweetly as ever, as sweet as a sweet chestnut, dipped in syrup, rolled in sugar, and topped with icing.
Overnight in Vielha and fabulous roads over the Pic du Midi with interesting coffee and lunch stops, it was great to be in France with decent weather driving on winding roads in the dry. The road surfaces in Spain had been very slippery in the wet, I think they resurface the roads there with Teflon. The overnight hotel in Toulouse was the Crown Victoria or something though we didn`t meet Jack Reacher. It was right on the main square which was great though it took an hour and twenty minutes to find it. We gave up on the route book when we eventually found the road works blocking our way at the third attempt though the MSA were putting up deviation arrows by then. We drove on asking the way in my imperfect French. It`s funny how, later, after a couple of drinks my English begins to slur but my French pronunciation improves.
We had a big day ahead with 340 miles to cover and a visit to the Albi circuit........in the dry.....whoopee ! Carole and a mound of luggage deposited, lightness was added, and once the ex-Peking to Paris Fangio Chevrolet, not a great circuit car, had been dragged out of the gravel traps, the red flag was lifted and the red mist came down. Brrrrrrrrrrrrm pus more rrrrrrrs, it`s time to break some bottoms, as the Americans say. The Elan was elantastic, braking from around 100mph to 30 in half the distance of most cars and carrying so much more speed through the bends than almost everything else, amazing given it`s narrow track and narrow tyres, maybe it was the driver not the car. We passed everything and no-one was passing us until at the end of the straight we had a huge deflation.......of ego............as Alan sneaked by, brakes streaming smoke. Maybe it was the car not the driver. He was still carrying luggage and wife though this may have been an advantage as he had 2 people with their feet pressed to the floor. Tina drove their car at the Charade circuit the next day and her email address is now [email protected].
From Albi we had a great drive to the stunning Millau bridge, lunch there and a gorgeous drive through the gorge. It was then I noticed an occasional funny feel to the clutch pedal. It felt sometimes cerlunky, if that`s a word. I checked the fluid and, more particularly, that the master cylinder hadn`t come loose on the bulkhead. It was clearly something in the clutch release and as I have the Voight 5 speed Sierra gearbox, the slave cylinder and mechanical gubbins are inside the bell housing, totally inaccessible without removing the engine. With the rest of the rally to finish and the drive back from Vichy .....you know.
I want to make it VERY clear that this has nothing to do with the unfair Lotus reputation as the parts are non-standard, I`d also like to (red) gloss over the nose-crunching minor carpark accident. Suffice to say the nick names "Gaffer" and "Duck" seem to have stuck.
So we found the hotel in Vichy at 8.30 p.m. without getting lost after a great day`s drive. We would have been there by 7.30 but for having to negotiate an hour`s traffic jam in and out of Puy just to visit a pointless car park and use up 100+ clutch depressions. I think we were looking for the routemaster`s plot as he seemed to have lost it. We had 2 nights in Vichy and the day inbetween included visits to the Charade circuit and the Mont Dore hillclimb, plus a trip to the fascinating Michelin Adventure. Prudence would have missed this excellent day but we decided to dice with clutch death and I`m glad we did. The Charade circuit, in particular, was outstanding. It swooped in and out of a steep valley with tight turns and fast climbs. I want to live there, in the Elan, forever. The Elan was brilliant, as ever, never mind the clutch. I rode shotgun, or riding mechanic, in the 100/4 for a few laps and though a different experience, completely, to the Elan, it was fabulous fun. I can`t imagine that driving a modern supercar could possibly be as exhilarating.
So, the end of the rally and all the entrants completed the distance, some with mechanical assistance from the brilliant Britassist, and David with 12 new plugs, 2 sets of points, a new coil, 3 miles of HT lead and (almost) all of Hilary`s patience. In the evening was the final dinner and a handful of awards, There`s one for the car most people wanted to take home which Alan won. He voted to take David`s Elite home so when he got there he could throw it in the skip. The most prestigious award is chosen by Ian from the MSA, the main man. It`s for the car that was the most delightful to be driving behind. He unanimously voted for our Elan, quite right, I agree. Rear of the year, Carole was delighted.
We broke the trip from Vichy to Zeebrugge with an overnight stay near Paris. David broke the trip with the first of a series of breakdowns after 15 minutes. The Perahorrifique in Paris was a nightmare, especially as the clutch pedal was feeling crunchier, oftener, but we we arrived at our destination around 5. David and Hilary arrived around 9, on a trailer. The trip to the ferry went well until about 5 miles from lunch in Sluis when the clutch pedal would no longer release the clutch. I managed well enough on the move but a halt at an uphill T junction brought matters to a halt. A kindly passing Belgian towed us to lunch in Sluis and Tony then towed us on and off the ferry where our brilliant insurance, Norton Heritage, arranged a breakdown truck to take the car to Paul Matty and a hire car for us, waiting on the dockside. They even phoned today to check everything went well. Marvellous. David, meanwhile had covered the miles between breakdowns under his own power but finally expired on the dock side in Hull. Hilary, amazingly, had not had a (nervous) breakdown but put her foot down and demanded trailering home.
She says she`s not sure if she`d do it again in the Elite, so that`s a yes, then.
Jim