The Stoneleigh Show seemed quieter than in past years so we had a chance to look round all the trade stands with ease and to meet many of the friends we have made on the Mini scene, we also saw some Smocers we hadn't seen for a while and caught up with their news.

The club stand was put together in a hurry when Gary announced just before we set off that the theme for the show was films, so we decided to do some recycling and reproduced Pirates Of The Caribbean.

And a good time was had by all.
Photos...

Lined up ready to go.


John looks at the route on the map.


Pre-run briefing.


The new bridge.


All together for a drink in the sun.

Anyone else got sunstroke??

J

Over the August Bank Holiday weekend we and other SMOC members took part in The Legendary Grand Tour in North Devon.
Neil and I travelled down to Exmoor the week before and spent a few days getting wet and wind-swept on the moor. On Friday we met up with the Morgan family and Gary in Morrison’s car park in Bideford and after some shopping we arranged to meet up early the next morning at the official GT campsite in Westward Ho!
On arrival we were told there had been some sort of delay and the run packs would not be ready for collection until later, so we decided to spend the day together and return in the afternoon. We all went to The Big Sheep and what a laugh it turned out to be, with Aussie Tony doing a spot of sheep shearing with hilarious commentary, a Sheep Show Parade where different breads walked across a cat walk, did a twirl and stood by their names, and remained standing still until after the show. Then it was off to The Duck Trials and a ride on the train, where SMOC filled all the carriages.
Tim rang to say he had arrived at the campsite and asked where we were, when he caught up with us Victoria let him in through the exit door. The girls explored Ewe-topia, Neil fed a lamb with a bottle, Kevin kept picking up the baby goats and guess who tried all the beers in the brewery three times? We had to leave before the Sheep Racing but not before we had refreshed ourselves at The Bo-peep Café, and Gary had posed for a photo with his new friend Baa baara.
Then it was back to the campsite to collect our run packs and make our way to Northam Burrows for the first of the three runs. This is the shortest one of the weekend and gets us used to driving in convoy with the motorbikes. We set off all tooting and hooting and snaked our way through Westward Ho! Northam, Appledore and into Bideford where we all parked up in the quay car park and proceeded to the Fish and Chip restaurant. We sat with a couple from Cornwall who do the run every year and caught up with their news, and then they asked if Gary and Tim were our sons!! (Oh no, what a nightmare that would be)
Next morning it was an early breakfast and then out to fit some ice cream chimes on the roof of the mini along with several flags. That done we drove into Bideford to meet the others and Aaron who had just arrived that morning. All the Minis are parked up in Bideford Park along all the footpaths to await the off when the mayor cuts the ribbon and we are led out by a pipe band. Andrea, Kevin Neil and I walked round selling the Grand Tour Limited Edition mugs SMOC had donated and had printed for the event, all were gone within ½ hour, Terry (event organiser) had the last 5 which he auctioned at the end of the run, they raised £60 to add on, which bought the total donated by SMOC to £310.
Then we set off through the park, people lined the walkways cheering and waving, then out along Bideford Quay with horns blaring and lights flashing, through Bideford town, then out onto the A39 where people were out everywhere cheering, in gateways and lay-bys even other drivers on the road were joining in the fun. We convoyed through the Devon countryside, through some tiny villages where people were out with banners saying ‘Welcome to the Minis’ ‘Hoot your horns, flash your lights here’ one outside a Old folks home said ‘OAPs for sale’ they were all out in their deck chairs waving and cheering us along.
Our first stop was at Hartland Quay where 280+ Minis were expertly packed into the cliff top car park. We stopped for approx ¾ hour to have lunch and take photos, then we were off again cross-country to Great Torrington where it seemed the whole town had come out to cheer us on. We got held up for a while due to roadwork’s and traffic lights but eventually we all got through even when the lights were on red. Then onwards along the roller coaster towards Umberleigh and finally arriving at Chapleton Barton Steam Fair 1 ½ hours late.
All the Minis parked in the arena, where the Devonshire compare with a very broad accent was full of Oohs and Arrrs and ‘I likes this one, ooh looks like custard, I likes custard, I likes that one etc etc. We sounded our ice cream chimes ‘Whats tharrt? Ice cream? Which one did tharrt? I’ll have a tuppenny wafer, where is he.’ When we went by we got a huge cheer. (We had been sounding the chimes all along the run, wherever we went we had been cheered and the crowds had been asking for 99s and lollys.) We parked up together and walked around enjoying the show. Gary said the chimes had set off his Road Angel and it had been going off all along the route, no chance of being caught speeding though, not on this run. After the show all SMOCers headed to The Puffing Billy for our Sunday roast and a walk along the Tarka Trail, where the otter jokes started and carried on all weekend over the SMOC radios, we never did see an otter, I think we were laughing too much and scared them off.
Monday morning we met up at Morrisons in Bideford, and had the supermarket staff in stitches. We were all dressed as ‘Allo Allo’ characters, Kevin made a fantastic Rene Artois, Andrea was Edith, Victoria and Jennifer were French waitresses, Neil, Gary, Tim and I French onion sellers, complete with caterpillars under our noses, and Aaron a RAF airman (he looked more like The Crazy Frog) Even the Minis were dressed up, one as a French onion seller, the other as The Café Mini. After buying supplies and petrol we made our way to Westward Ho! to meet the other Minis. There was a great variety of costumes see www.smallcarsbighearts.co.uk. From under the beret on our Mini we had the ‘Allo Allo’ theme and punch lines from the show playing through a speaker, on the bonnets were French bread and a large basket of French food. We spoke to so many people, some even thought we were all French, we were in hysterics most of the time.
We were led out of Westward Ho! by a pipe band and again everywhere we went people were out to cheer the Minis on. We went into the grounds of Little Bridge House, the Childrens Hospice South West ( where all our sponsorship money goes) some of the children were out to see us they got a special hoot from all the Minis. Then onward, by- passing Barnstable this year, along some very narrow lanes winding uphill onto Exmoor. At one point the convoy came to a halt while the motorbike marshals went through to clear the roads ahead. While we were stopped Hill Top Minis the club in front of SMOC and all dressed as Father Christmas’s got out and danced in the road to Christmas music, you had to see it to believe it. Then it was off again through Bratton Flemming, Blackmore Gate, Barbrook and into Lynton where the crowds lined the street and loved the ice-cream chimes. Then it was through The Valley of The Rocks and into Lee Abbey where we stopped for a French lunch, Neil, Kev and Tim moaned about getting their hairy caterpillars wet and Gary got mistaken for Frank Spencer, Neil said he looked more like Captain Sensible. We learnt that Aaron had broken down (his clutch had gone) and he was awaiting the AA to transport him back to Kent. Getting back into the Mini to continue the rest of the run Edith ripped her fish-nets and Renee snapped his French stick.
Then we were off again along the single-track toll road that winds and seems to climb forever, with one hairpin bend after the other. We had a particularly slow mini in front of us, she managed to loose the rest of the convoy, but we did manage to catch up again when we went down hill. Then on past The Hunters Inn and into Coombe Martin where we were again greeted by cheers from the crowds, onward again to Illfracombe, where we all parked up, dressed the Minis again and went off to enjoy the rest of the afternoon, which included a raffle, auction and prize giving. Best-dressed male was Renee (Kevin), best dressed female Edith (Andrea) and best dressed club SMOC there were loads of other prizes best motorbike, best biker, farthest travelled etc. then Terry announced the run had raised £25,000 so far this included £3,000+ collected by the bikers in street collections along the way. Later Tim left for his marathon drive to Scotland to meet up with his parents for a spot of fishing and the rest of us made our way back to Bideford stopping off on route for a meal, still dressed in our French gear.
Next morning Gary left for his trip home and the rest of us went off to Bucks Mills to sit on the beach, Kevin and Jennifer did some rock pooling and Kev got VERY wet, we also done some kite flying and watched the gillimots. Later we went to a pub called The Cider Press and watched Morris Dancing in the street, we were all invited to join in, some did with hilarious results.
The Grand Tour is without a doubt ‘The One To Do’ they welcome all Minis, old and new, there are a few rules for safety purposes, but the whole week-end is FUN,FUN,FUN, and every single penny raised goes to the Children’s Hospice. I’ve already booked my holiday for next year and am busy thinking what theme we can do. Want to go?? Look out in your newsletters and magazines early next year for details.

Mags

G’day, I was asked by magazine editor Bruce to write about SMD, I don’t think the pommey bastard realised that it would be done in the Australian theme.

During the course of the weekend many people asked either posh Bruce, little Bruce, concord Bruce or myself skinny Bruce why we were dressed as Aussies when the theme was the 60’s, to answer this my colleagues from philosophy department at the university of Walamaloo, simply challenged the questioner to prove that there weren’t Australians in the 60’s!

For the more intrepid members the weekend started mainly on the Thursday where we were joined by honorary Bruce with daughter Sheila, army Bruce, the brothers Bruce, Membership Bruce & Sheila, constable Bruce, Baby Bruce and mother, my parents Bruce & Sheila and finally Bruce. It was a long day but by about 5pm we were ready to go down the boozer and have a well deserved beer, we had a small supply with us but you wouldn’t want a warm beer – would you?

Camp Bruce was assembled during the day at various times. Our sleeping quarters for the next few days were being sorted, one of the great things with having line marking paint is that you can do anything. Parking spaces were created for all our minis and Ute’s, as well as an outline of myself which remained visible for several days.

Now at camp Bruce we had to set a few ground rules: rule one, three, Five and seven were shouted around a lot during the weekend and doesn’t need repeating here, rules four is the most important “I don’t want to catch anybody not drinking”, and as for rule six – THERE IS NO RULE SIX!

Another one of our missions on Thursday was to take a trip into Maidstone where Halfords Bruce had arranged for a broken mini BMW mini to be put aside for us, we picked this up and back at base handed it over to Concord Bruce and Rocket Bruce who spent a short time checking the wiring and fuses and got it running in no time.



Back again on Friday morning, and a trailer load of camping accessories and gazebos arrived and was assembled including a 1/30th scale model of a Saturn V rocket! After a bit of a mammoth session on the gate welcoming everybody we retired to the dray and managed to enjoy the second set from the Fabulous Boogie Band, after which it was back to Camp Bruce for a glass of Pimm’s and a bit of music from my new shopping trolley complete with CD player, amp and speakers!

It’s a real testament to how big the show is getting when you look over at the amount of camping area we occupy - its massive, in a world of declining mini shows its good to see one that gets bigger and better every year. And without a doubt this was our biggest and best year yet.

The main show started Saturday morning; the arena act by Terry Grant or at least his assistant was amusing the first time around but needed a bit more variety. We spent the day helping out in the arena and having a look around the show. The weather was really nice very warm, hot enough to boil a monkey's bum. Inevitable the Saturday day ticket holders went home and it was time for the campers to start to party, at which point the Bruce’s unveiled what had taken months of planning and dozens of trips to Oxfam, our real 60’s theme – the grannies. Words cannot do it justice how stupid we felt but we caused a storm in the Dray. A brief tour of the glow show and we retired back to camp Bruce to enjoy a large campfire and some toasted marshmallows. Later on we were joined by Stephen and Paul who had just come back from raving in the disco, now in order to avoid any confusion I will refer to them from now on as Bruce and Bruce. The look of sheer amazement on Bruce’s face when at about 2 in the morning and having run out of nearly everything else to burn and toast we started putting stilton on skewers and roasting it over the camp fire – it was lovely, it was a fantastic evening and we had a great time, we made a big effort to keep the noise down so we didn’t disturb anyone else, but at about 2.30 one of the security guards came round to tell us to keep it down! You know it’s been a long night when having been a wee bit tipsy earlier on you go to bed nearly sober.



After popping home in the morning to pick up some stuff and grab a quick shower I returned to the show, for the first time in years I wasn’t doing the early shift on the gate and it was nice to see the show was almost running itself, a lot of the people who help at the show have now been doing so for years and can just be relied upon to make the show run as smooth at it does.

Special mention has to be made to baby Bruce who is now the Bruce’s official mascot; he behaved impeccably all weekend and was looking so cute that we gave him his first car, the blue BMW mini given to us by Halfords Bruce 3 days earlier, although his father was looking at the car planning what he could modify to give his sons car a bit more street cred.

I can honestly say that I don’t remember much of Sunday it all happened in a blur, I do remember that the loudest exhaust was as massive as ever and I have a great respect for Bruce and how he manages to talk for so long, the team games as usual seemed absolutely chaotic and again it was the efforts and enthusiasm of Shelia who pulled it all together. The concours looked great, if a little lost in the big arena. Prize giving seems to go on even longer ever year but finally the last prize was awarded and the show drew to a close, all that was left was a fair bit of packing up and then it was off to the pub for a well deserved drink and celebration of an excellent show and a job well done.


Skinny Bruce.

It was an extremely hot day when we all met up at Clacket Lane services to convoy down to Shoreham for this show, the first put on by the Brighton Mini Club. I had cadged a lift with Gary as Neil was working yet again and I didn’t want to miss it. Kevin (Morgan) very kindly agreed to take the ez-up and club stand stuff in his roof box, thus freeing up some space in Gary’s car.
When we were ready to leave Ricky said ‘hang on a minute, Ian and Sally have put their names down to go’, but when he rang them they had totally forgotten and were still in bed. We headed off down the M23, keeping all six minis together for most of the journey. We were met at the rec by Adam, Ali, Alan, Andy and Jackie. We parked up in a VERY large rec and Gary set about setting up the regalia under the ez-up. As I said it was very, very very hot and we needed a shady spot to sit, but the only thing in the shade was the regalia, but some of us did manage to squeeze together in one corner, the others braved it in the sun and turned different shades of red.
The show appeared not to be too busy but it was in such a large area it was hard to tell, there were a few trade stands, a Pride of Ownership concourse, a raffle and a guest appearance of DJ Diddy David Hamilton who brought along his Volcano Orange Mini Cooper registration number D1 DDY.
Gary done the rounds to make sure all traders present had booked for SMD and Victoria, Jennifer and Rhys flyered all the minis.
At about 4 we had had enough of the sun, packed away and headed home. It was great to do the homeward journey in the cabriolet with the roof down and at last cool off.

Mags

Our Best Day Trip .... yet

7am on Saturday 18th March and 15 SMOCers were at the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone. I arrived last as usual and while the others were warming in the terminal, I secretly sprayed everyone's mirrors and rear windows with an invisible spray. This is a new technology that means when I was stopped for a full cavity search by UK customs, no-one else saw and boarded the train. Despite a thorough search of the shuttle I couldn't find anyone. This seemed like a bad omen for the day, as I had all the route sheets, radios and itinerary, which had been too windy to give out outside the terminal.

Fortunately Mobiles work in the train and was able to track the Minis down to the coaches only part of the train and organised a meeting point in France.

Kevin volunteered to lead to Bruges as he has driven coach trips there several times. The journey was smooth and the SMOC radios worked - why do they only work abroad?

About 11.30am we arrived in Bruges and toured the cobbled streets, which look like Turin and have fantastic acoustics for the kookaracha and other airhorn tunes.

We found an underground carpark, but got separated onto different floors. The carpark had a warren of exits and somehow we all came out of different doors into different streets and dimensions.

The next 20 minutes was great fun, it was like Anneka Rice in Treasure Hunt as we all used our radios to describe where we were and run down the narrow streets. Once we met up we agreed to separate and re-convene at 4pm.

We all did similar things - The Chocolate Museum was good but very little chocolate. Did you know a Cocoa bean in the size of a coconut? With Global Warming we should be able to grow it here soon! The town was very old with a huge market which was cleared up within the hour with no mess or evidence it existed.

We all had good lunches and some of Paul's Party had a few beers which they then deposited on the E40 motorway.

In an amazing co-incidence we bumped into Mrs. Mad Frank in a chocolate shop, she recognised me immediately from Southern Mini Days. She lives in Zeebrugge and was in town shopping - talk about a small world.

Our trip moved on to Cite Europe where we had 3 hours to stock our trolleys and eat. The trolley's were loaded to the top with large bottles of liquids. In most trolleys this was top quality 1 Euro a bottle wine, but in Paul's there was 24 litres of Fabric Softener. For those of you who do not know Paul, he's the one that stars in the Comfort adverts and has baby soft clothes.

Having only had a three course meal at 1 o’ clock, we decided on another one. Neil and Mags recommended an Irish Pub in the food court. Myself, Robert & Jason waited there for ages before eating in a traditional French restaurant. Mags got a bit confused, she meant the English Pub, in the French food court, opposite the Irish Pub on our Day Trip to Belgium.

Returning to the Trains was fun. We left in convoy but split into 3 as there we no signs. I somehow drove 5 miles to do 150 yards but got through the check in first. In the spirit of the journey outbound, I had another cavity search by French customs, who failed to notice my radar detector. This carries the death penalty in France! We also got separated again into different trains and carriages. The automated check in, is not recommended if you want to keep together as you can't negotiate the same earlier train with it, like you can a human.

Everyone agreed it had been a great day and we want to do a weekend in Bruges to see it all this time, possibly 16th-17th June. As this is School Half Term costs are slightly higher, the train is £54 per car and the Formula 1 Brugge Zeebrugge Hotel is £25 per room for up to 3 good friends. Other Hotels are available - IBIS £70 per night and Top Quality Sofitel - £79 per superior room.

GARY

It was a perfect evening for a run out to the coast. There was a rich golden glow to the beautiful scenery.

If you weren't there, you missed out!



The Minis parked at Reculver Towers.

If you are interested in joining us on an evening run to the pub, or one of the many monthly events, join up and read your newsletters regularly.

Look forward to seeing you.
Jason Dilling
www.jasondilling.co.uk

WET!