RogeRunners Devon - Day 4 - When It All Went Wronger

 

Day 4? But you’re at home you cry. Well yes, read on.

I went out to the garage first thing & took out the ½ shaft. As suspected the bearing was a mess, with balls hanging out of the side & the cage all crumpled up. I ordered a new one from Burton’s & started cleaning the oiled up parts. 

Then there was a message, my girlfriend’s car had broken down.

This was the nightmare scenario.

Fortunately she was in a safe place with two of the other Rogues (Ken again - not getting much driving in on his driving holiday). The alternator light had been moody the previous day & then when she was somewhere south of Ilfracombe the engine coughed & died because the alternator seems to have failed.

There was a lot of tooing & froing on whatsapp but in the end she elected to be relayed home, which was the best idea in the circumstances, but all our luggage - & she has a lot of luggage - was at the hotel, so it was all going to have to be moved by the other Rogues.

But that’s not the worst of it. They were sat at the roadside for over NINE HOURS waiting to be picked up. It had taken so long to organise a truck that in the end they offered her a courtesy car & the Tiger would be delivered in a day or two.

BUT

They wouldn't bring the courtesy car to her, oh no. The truck would take her & the Tiger to Exeter & then she would have to drive 1 1/2 hours back to Ilfracombe, or 5 hours home in a strange car in the dark, when she'd been hanging around for 9 1/2 hours already. Is that considered safe?

Between them the three Rogues decided that she would go back to the hotel (I'd cancelled it, then called again & said NO! we still need it!) & then today Ken has driven her home - which is beyond his house & Mark has bought mine & her belongings back to my house & I'll sort it all out & take hers next time I go. (sigh).

RogueRunners Devon IV - Day 3 - When It All Went Wrong

It started off well, the overnight rain hadn’t found its’ way into the car, so the roof came off & after breakfast we said farewell to Duncan & Alison who were heading home for a family celebration & au revoir to Mark who was spending the day seeing the sights of Ilfracombe – yes I did warn him about the Damian Hurst sculpture “Verity” – after all he may want some lunch during the day.

We decided to go west, so only five cars headed out of town heading for Cornshire & we found ourselves on a lane with “ROAD AHEAD CLOSED” signs, I’ve never understood the point of these signs unless they say where it’s closed. We rumbled on though many pretty hamlets & past many more such signs & eventually after perhaps eight miles we did find a road that was closed, but not on our route. We seemed to get through Barnstaple easier than yesterday & got out into the countryside, but all was not well.

In a village, as I pulled in to let a vehicle pass, there was a small thud noise, barely audible, but I thought I’d felt it through the chassis. I decided it was probably just a pop though the exhaust as it had started doing that again recently. But as we travelled on it did it again & again, then I was hearing it properly. I wondered if a suspension bolt had loosened, but bouncing the car up & down in the “Buffing Billy café” car park showed no sign of clonking, so we moved on. It was still getting worse, so I pulled into a layby on the A39 & looked underneath, axle oil was dripping from the nearside end, I took the wheel off, but all the bolts were tight, something had failed in the bearing I had fitted less than a year ago.

I would be going home on a truck.

I thought if I could limp the car back to the hotel I could passenge with someone for a day & organise a truck for the Saturday, so Ken (who had given up his blatt to stay with me) & I turned round & trundled up the A39 at 30 getting in everyone’s way (sorry I we held you up) but all the time the noise was getting worse, the worrying thing being that it wasn’t constant, it was horribly mechanical, then it was disappeared, then it was horrible again, so after a few miles I pulled into a layby & called for a lorry. To their credit they didn’t send a man in a small van to assess it, they just sent a low loader with a promise of 60 – 90 minutes. But after an hour & a half, of a lorry there was no sign.

At one stage a recovery truck went past with a graphic of a Cobra on the side, I said to Ken "that one would be appropriate", but it didn't stop. When I called again for an update I was told there had been an accident up the road & that had taken precedence. After another hour I called the dispatcher, to be told my rescuer “was a few minutes away” which to be fair he was – but on the other side of the A39 & it was ten miles & two sets of road works to the next junction to turn around.

While I had been waiting, the bank called me to say my credit card had been used fraudulently, though I wasn’t convinced it actually was the bank as it was all “a bit odd”.

So eventually I was picked up after three hours by the truck with the Cobra on the side & Ken went back to the hotel. I have to say the truck itself was very nice, air suspension & all very comfy as far as it went.

But as far as it went was Taunton Dean services. 

I would have to await another lorry, then I got a text message saying the other lorry would be 2hrs 20min – just long enough to need to pay £15 for parking via an app that I didn’t have. I waited 1 ½ hours in case the truck arrived early – no chance of course & it then took me the thick end of an hour to get the app & pay for the parking.

The next low loader arrived at the promised time. It was not like the first one. It was older than my Cactus & pitched, heaved & crashed over the slightest ripple in the road, but I was on my way.

Three hours later I arrived home, ten hours after calling for help. I put the car in the garage & retired to bed.

RogueRunners Devon IV - Day 2

Day 2 started dry, so as Duncan & Alison would be heading home tomorrow we elected to do a new route, the southern most route, all the way down to Dartmoor.

The beginning was a bit turgid to be honest, with traffic all through Barnstaple & then when the roads did get interesting, we were stuck behind a logging lorry for quite some time, but slowly the roads got better &the traffic thinned, but then drizzle started as we climbed up onto Dartmoor. But the road was fantastic as was the scenery. I had found a hotel as a coffee stop, but the look on street view wasn’t promising, so I had a back-up, but in the event the Two Bridges Hotel looked very nice as we crossed an ancient stone bridge to arrive in the car park & as a couple of us were a little ahead I managed to get some photos as the others crossed the bridge.

There were signs up saying parking was £5 for non-residents, we would be customers, but not residents, so I asked at reception & was told parking would be be free if we were customers. Which was a good thing as the place was very genteel, but in spite of that they didn’t even object to Mark’s legs being on show! The room we sat in had no fewer than seven clocks, none of which were showing the right time, one had no hands!

It was a little awkward to exit the car park, but we all managed without too much wheelspin & we traversed the rest of Dartmoor avoiding green sheep, red sheep, horses & cows, before refuelling, then heading back across Dartmoor heading north.

It was here that we found ourselves doing mile after mile on a tiny road with high hedges & grass & even rubble in the middle, I wondered why I’d chosen that road & why it hadn’t been found in checking, then I realised there had been no waypoints at all, so this was a SatNav route, not the T.Y.R.E. route I’d planned.

Just as we got back to roads with a white line up the middle, we arrived at the second coffee stop at Ullacombe Farm Café which was another lovely place. After that the rain slowly got a little heavier as we headed north, but was still little more than drizzle when we re-fuelled & only turned to proper rain once we got back to the hotel. Buy joy of joys - the self-park I'd mended on my Girlfriend's car worked perfectly.

After a rest in the hotel we wandered down to The Lime Kiln restaurant & mostly had fish & chips.

RogueRunners Devon IV - Day 1

We were up early – it was still niiight tiiime, but I prepared the car & loaded it up & at very early o’clock we set off for a refuelling stop at Popham. While we were there both Brian & Mark went past & when we arrived at the breakfast stop in Andover at a Travelodge in Hawker Siddley Way (which the SatNav entirely failed to pronounce), the gang was pretty much all there.

Having had breakfast, we set off back towards London briefly before turning south towards the A30.

We didn't encounter much traffic through Salisbury & managed to all stay together, we passed through Wilton where the carpets come from & at shortly afterward we branched off the A30, heading for the B3081 & ZigZag Hill. The road runs along an open ridge before plunging into the bends & there was a car about 1/4 mile ahead, "no problem" I thought, "I'll just rumble along slowly & have the curves to myself. But I hadn't realised just how slowly the car was going along a wide, open A road. When a car came up behind me I thought I'd better speed up a little or it will overtake giving me the same car-in-front problem, but the actual car in front was now going really really slowly, so I caught it at the top of the hill & it actually STOPPED twice on the way down (sigh).

But shortly after SHAFTSBURY there was a coffee stop at “The Udder Farm Shop”, which is a very nice place indeed & has slogans such as this on the walls.

Refreshed & back on the road we headed mostly south & a bit west, at this point we were in deepest Dorset, so the villages were few, far between & mostly double barrelled. we enjoyed some wriggly A roads as we headed north back to the A303 & M5 via “Beech Barn Café” for another coffee stop.

We weren't at all sure what to make of this as we drove in, it was a little way off the road & appeared to be a complex of renovated farm buildings each with a different company name over the door, we weren't sure where to park, so parked in a line in a small car park & I went off searching for the café in the obvious place near the parked cars I'd seen when I got out of the Stylus. Having confirmed the location I returned to find the Rogues ambling off in another direction - they're useless without a SatNav.

The place turned out to be a bit of a find, very nice, very quiet & very nice cake.

Beyond Ilchester there was a refuel stop on the A38 & we were soon on the proper Exmoor roads we’d come for, the roads improving all the way to Dulverton, then it got really good all the way to the coast. But before that there was some confusion about a last coffee stop at Withypool – it was a nice looking little café in a 1930s petrol station – the pumps were still there, the website gallery had photos of classic cars & old bikes outside, 

so I thought it may be a photo op, but in the event there were quite a few cars parked around the tiny village green, a couple of us went over the town bridge to a car park that was mostly full, at which point someone said they'd rather go on to the hotel & everyone except Mark & me followed them. They missed a bit of a treat really, almost as soon as we got into the café, most of the customers left (this often happens - can't think why), so I moved the Stylus next to the old pumps & took an atmospheric photo or two.

So it was just Mark & I that rumbled serenely up to the coast & round the hairpins on the road into Coombe Martin, re-fuelled in Hele Bay, then after a mile or so, into the hotel.

That evening we sauntered down to the harbour & "The Smugglers" for tea as the sun went down.

DevonBlatt The Forth - Prologue

The DevonBlatts began as a gentle "season opener" before the main road trip in May each year & a WalesBlatt in September. But as we no longer go to Wales since it has become tourist hostile & last year, organising two road trips inside a month was too much, we've moved the DevonBlatt to September & extended it to the length of the old WalesBlatt.

Will it work? Well the weather will be similar to April & it's at the end of the season, so the traffic could be OK, but it might be festooned with retirees driving campers - imagine, retired folk out on a driving holiday! Tch!

We are going back to out usual hotel, the very nice "Laston House" where there aren't evening meals, so we'll stroll into town, I have three different restaurants booked.

The Stylus is running OK - if a little smelly. I put two gallons of diesel in it by mistake, fortunately that only took it to 1/2 full, so I was able to brim it with petrol to dilute it enough to limp home (on 25% Diesel) where I drained 5 gallons out & then refilled it again, so it's down to 6% diesel now & apart from being a little hesitant to start, it's fine once it's warm. So can I claim it's a hybrid? It's running on two different fuels after all. Hopefully in the next few days I'll get the chance to run it around & dilute the diesel a bit more before DevonBlatt IV.

In other good news I think I have solved the riddle of my lovely girlfriend's Tiger windscreen wiper problem - possibly both problems. The wipers work for about three wet days, then stop working. Later they will just work again. I reasoned this must be water related & the large hole in the dash so the ignition key can be fitted into the column looked a likely ingress point. A little CADing & a flexible print later & there is now a shield over the hole which should stop the majority of the water getting in. There was also an issue with the wiper self park - it didn't. My Girlfriend had always assumed this was "because KitCar", but we assured her the wipers should self park & I approached the Tiger with a multi meter & a wiring diagram. I proved that the self park signal was getting back to the switch & the switch itself was a likely suspect. But where to get a 40 year old stalk switch? Ebay offered a few at £50 each, but a message posted on the Rogues whatsapp almost immediately produced an offer of a matching pair of switches from a guy who sold his kit a couple of years ago. They were exchanged for beer, the wiper side switch was swapped into the Tiger & IT WORKED!

So if there's anything that will guarantee no rain on DevonBlatt IV, it's making the wipers work.

EXCELLENT 👍

Braking Point

 <Sigh>

The Stylus arrived all those years ago with hydraulically switched brake lights, in fact it had two hydraulic switches, one on the front & one on the rear system - which is a good thing, but they still only switch the brake lights on when the pressure rises high enough to trigger them, so I thought I'd fit a mechanical switch as well, which will switch the light when the pedal moves.

I put a micro switch on the pedal & a ramp on the footwell roof (floor mounted pedals), that lasted a few presses & stopped working. I re-arranged it a bit & it seemed fine until a guy in a BMW pulled up beside me & instead of the car-based compliment I was expecting said "your brake lights are on all the time". I crawled into the footwell & unplugged the mechanical switch.

I tried another type of microswitch - which broke - so I went back to the original roller type & printed a slightly different shape ramp. Once again it worked perfectly in the garage - BRILLIANT.

I went out today to meet some of the Rogues for breakfast, but first I pulled over to post something & as I turned round to go back to the car, THE DAMN BRAKE LIGHTS WERE ON - ARSE!

Once again I took off the steering wheel & clambered into the footwell at full stretch at the roadside & unplugged the switch. A little while later as I rolled into Guildford in the traffic, a lorry driver leaned out of his cab & said "excuse me, your brake lights aren't working" (well, I was in Guildford, even lorry drivers are polite in Guildford). I cursed under my breath, reached behind the roll bar & pushed the brake pedal - the brake lights came on, so I just hadn't had to push the pedal hard enough in the traffic to make the hydraulic switch work WHICH IS WHY I WANTED THE MECHANICAL ONE.

Now back at home I could see that while the roller travelled up the ramp & switched the lights off, it was possible for the pedal to carry on moving to the extent that the roller came out of contact, switching the lights on again. It didn't do that at all during testing in the garage.

With the newly printed angled ramp the roller stays in contact & the brake lights stay off when my foot's off the pedal. All the time. What ever the pedal does. Over & over & over again I've tested it, pushing the pedal gently, hard, fast & slow & it's worked perfectly every time. Will it work outside the garage? Only time will tell.

And Another Thing

MkIa, a MkII is the same but with all the mods
 that made a MkI into a MkIa built in at the factory.
A MkV is also the same to look at except for grey green
camo (from 1941)

Also while I was video editing & writing entries for this year's road trip, we went to another airshow at Shuttleworth. It was billed as a celebration of 90 years since the first flight of the Spitfire & with much trumpeting they announced that they had booked one of every airworthy mark, I counted up - MkI, II, V, VIII, IX, XI, XIV, XVI, XIX & a Seafire MkXV (Spitfire Mk numbers get horribly complicated). Well, it didn't quite happen, 

The Seafire's been in deep maintenance for a while & although it has flown recently, they wisely decided it wasn't ready for an outing yet & the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight didn't show up (again) which meant no MkII. But Shuttleworth put on a good display with the nine they had flying (the MkIX in Russian markings was static only).

A USAAF MkIX (yes the Americans flew Spitfires),
basically a MKV with an uprated engine, the radiators
 under both wings are the same size, before that the
port side one (oil cooler) was much smaller

They came over in three waves of three with the last wave peeling off each time & flying about a bit. The first wave to do this was the later marks, working back in time with each row. I guess this was because the later marks are 100mph faster than a MkI, so putting the slower ones at the front stops them getting left behind. They had done a good job in selecting a range of types, there were RAF, USAAF & Russian markings as well as aircraft from a Czech RAF squadron. there was one in the brown / green Battle of Britain camo, several in the grey / green used from 1941 when the RAF was operating more over the sea, the Russian Spitfire had RAF camo & markings, but with the roundels over-painted in Russian green & the red stars over that.

Easily the fastest of the Merlin engined Spitfires, the MkXI
 was an un-armed photo-reconnaissance aircraft

There were two in photo reconnaissance blue (Mks XI & XIX) & one in tropical brown / brown. So it was good to see the variety. 

They also laid on a few "set pieces". In much the same way that at the last show the Hispano Buchon (post war Spanish Messerschmitt BF109 development) had a dog-fight with a Grumman Martlet (Wildcat) & lost, in this show it was up against a Spitfire & lost again.

Unfortunately, the aircraft it was flying against was a two seater, so it was a plane that didn't exist in WWII against a plane that didn't exist in WWII. I tried to take my photos such that the second canopy didn't show - with some success I might add.

There was also Shuttleworth's own Spitfire MkV flying with a Sopwith Camel. I say "flying with" not "in formation with" because the camel would fly past the crowd & at some point the Spitfire, though going as slowly as was safe, would hurtle past, but again, not something you'll see at any other airshow.

Another of the set pieces demonstrated fighter development through WWII, with a Gloster Gladiator (250mph) - some were still serving in the UK in the Battle or Britain, a Hawker Hurricane (300mph) & a mid - late war MkIX Spitfire (400mph) in tropical camo.

There were all sorts of other displays as well from rare & unique aircraft & as it started to get dark a MiG 17 appeared, actually (a little like the "Messerschmitt") it was a Polish built aircraft, so not really a MiG at all). It was saved for the evening part of the show because the pilot put on an excellent demonstration, with many passes close enough for the crowd to see & lit the afterburner every chance he got, well played that man! It seems this plane is hitting every air show in the country this year, see it if you can.

The MiG was very nearly the star of the show for me, but I'm afraid that accolade goes to this.

A derelict 1933 Rolls Royce was found in a field in around 2018. When it was dragged out & cleaned up the chassis & suspension were in remarkably good condition. The rest was pants, so the chap hatched a plan, the rolling chassis got another Rolls Royce engine fitted - granted it's a little larger than the original - it's a Meteor - the unsupercharged version of the 27 litre Merlin that was used in tanks & boats. It then got all new bodywork which goes right up to the very edge of ridiculous without ever stepping over.

It's called "The Grenadier" & apparently it weighs four & a half tons, but with 850bhp on offer, has to be restricted to "only" 135mph because the tyres will destroy themselves any faster. The workmanship on the body was exquisite, but it averages 3mpg & cost the guy £350 to drive from his home "in the Midlands" to Shuttleworth - which as a southerner, I would say is in the Midlands - & it had to be refuelled three times - each way.

But what a mad, wonderful, glorious thing.

Sir - I salute you!

More Happenings

For Christmas my lovely girlfriend bought me a full day Rally experience at Silverstone Rally School.

Oh you ask, how did that go?

It went very well thank you, after a journey that was more "interesting" than it needed to be (navigational issues), we had a welcome chat / safety briefing from one of the instructors, & then were split into two groups. first was turning left - rally style, so handbrake turning & power sliding. The car handling one group went anti-clockwise round a section of the rally course, while the other car pirouetted left round two cones. each person had three goes each, which was good because the reasons why it all went wrong tended to filter out while I was waiting for my next go. Actually not much did go wrong, against all probability I kept the car out of the trees & off of the cones.

Ah yes, the car, a generation one Subaru Imprezza, converted to rear wheel drive & with a welded diff, no idea about the engine, but there was no turbo whine or whoosh & I would imagine a basic 1600 would give as much power as a novice would want, it was certainly nice & responsive.

Following the turning left, we did a lot of turning right & I started to feel I was getting the hang of going sideways, the next exercise was a short rally stage where we were to turn left AND right putting into practice what we'd learnt, this meant I couldn't just drive with one hand on the hydraulic handbrake & pull it as required I had to steer properly & find the handbrake as required. I felt it went OK & my instructor praised my preciseness (it didn't feel precise as my feet tangled & by arms flailed, BUT I didn't hit any banks or cones, so that's good enough for me. Then it was lunch time & about half of the cadre (who were on a 1/2 day course) left. 

After lunch, there was an explanation of rally pace notes & then we sauntered back out to the cars to drive more of the course while being instructed by the instructors. This too went remarkably well, twice I loused up a sharp left hand handbrake turn (naturally directly in front of the viewing terrace), but the third one went better, my speed was improving & as long as I had sufficient track width I was reasonably confidently sliding the car round corners, leaving satisfyingly billowy clouds of dust.

The final item was a "free for all" with the instructor telling me which way to go at the various junctions, now that was great fun, but 48 years of road driving was making it's presence felt. at one junction where I was supposed to be gracefully drifting the car to the left, I switched the indicator on! next time round I felt myself instinctively looking for other traffic! On another occasion approaching a corner "at speed" & hitting the brakes hard & sharp to get weight over the front axle I went to change down a gear.

At the final de-brief, my instructor held my certificate until last & referred to me as "Dr Precession" because apparently I got the car straitened out & set up for the next corner very well - it didn't feel like that at the time, but I was moving relatively quickly, didn't spin & didn't stall, so I'll take the complement.

Thanks go to my girlfriend for buying the experience for me & taking these pictures.

So overall a fantastic day's driving / learning. At 65 I'm not going to be taking up competitive rallying, but I do feel that the course will improve my driving out on the moors on our road trips, the instructors were very good, commendably brave & the cars were exactly what I would've hoped for, fast enough to be fun, docile enough to be controllable & very easy to drive - well, if you're used to a simple rear wheel drive car that is, some of the younger ones seemed to be struggling a little.

Grimsthorpe Speed Trials

My lovely Girlfriend & I visited Grimsthorpe Speed Trials again this year, it was a good day out, the point is to run some slow old cars along the drive of a country house against the clock. No sorry, the point is to have a day out in the countryside - the excuse is to run some slow old cars along the drive of a country house against the clock.

There were some fabulous '30s & earlier cars, some immaculate, some looking like they'd just left the barn they were put in in 1939 & some built for occasions such as this out of an eclectic mix of parts from the early days of motoring.

There were also bikes, INCREDIBLY NOISY bikes, others were two stokes belching smoke. I didn't like the bikes.

There were also a few proper racers, two Bugatis, an ERA which is a new-build & a couple of MGs, one with an early IRS. The two originals were being treated nicely, but the new-build ERA was getting some beans, smoking off the line each time.

The other cars mostly pootled up the track, I dare say they were going as fast as they would, but many of them weren't build for speed.

Here's a case in point. It's actually an AC, as in AC Cobra, it has the logo on the foot plates & everything. There didn't appear to be much in the way of brakes. 

This Austin Seven special looked fantastic & sounded amazing, revving like a modern motorcycle. the aluminium panelling was a work of art.

Then there was this - it's a Ford model A with all the bits you don't need taken off.

Of course some people's idea of what you need is different to others

But the model A seemed almost luxurious next to this 1909 Daraq - or a least parts of one. Everything was drilled for lightness, the chassis, the tank straps, the pedals.

It was quite brilliant & on it's first public outing, the chap said it was good up to "a certain speed" & then the 1 litre, single cylinder engine hit the car's resonant frequency & it all leapt up & down a bit.

There were original sporting cars from Riley & singer, all absolutely beautiful

And this ratty Bugatti was there, there were two actually, neither in "showroom condition" but both looking spectacular.

What Else Have I Been Doing?

The road trip was in May, it's taken me until July to sort through all the video footage & post them up, so what else has been happening in the blattersphere?

Well my lovely girlfriend & I had a very good week's holiday in Norfolk. Perhaps not your first though for a holiday destination, but we rented a small cottagey thing & packed the week full of interesting places.

On the way we called into Old Buckenden Airfield where there is a memorial / museum to the USAAF aircrew who operated B24 Liberators from there in WWII, by co-incidence they had a Piper Cup owner's club meet on, so that was good.

On the second day we went to the Norfolk & Suffolk Aviation Museum, it's small, but like a lot of small museums it packed in a lot of things & some quite unexpected interesting things too. This for example is the front end of a Boulton Paul Overstrand - the RAF's first bomber with an enclosed cockpit & turrets, they only made enough for one squadron because it was one of the last biplanes & the times they were a changing.

Also, this >

That's a Merlin engine from a crashed aircraft, you're looking at the bottom of the engine as it lies on it's side. The bent thing at the bottom is the crankshaft, the first piston is still in it's bore liner (squashed flat) at the top.

As a bonus they had a small car show in the grounds that day.

The day after that was a trip to Banham Zoo, so I won't trouble you with that - it was a very nice zoo, but not the sort of thing I write about here - no engines.

Tuesday was Bressingham Gardens & Steam Museum, obviously the gardens fall into the same category as the zoo, though they were very nice even for a non-gardener like me. But the steam side of it was good, as we arrived there were a couple of volunteers tending to a traction engine, so we took photos & asked questions, then wandered into the sheds where there were engines undergoing maintenance.

In the second shed though were lots of engines & the closest one made my girlfriend stop dead & say "no, that can't be", but it was - a big old main line engine called "Black Prince" & one of her favourites was not only there, but with a ladder so visitors could get up onto the foot plate - which we did.

Next was another shed with the high street of Warmington-on-Sea from Dad's Army with several of the original vehicles parked up including Jones' butchers van. once again we arrived as it opened & left just after it closed.

Wednesday & the Forncett industrial Steam Museum, we arrived & a guy said "I'm doing a tour in ten minutes, would you like to be on it?" silly question! so we were guided round the museum's fifteen or so beautiful old steam engines which they do steam up once a month, but on this trip we couldn't fit a steaming day in. All the engines run & all are maintained in fantastic condition - in a shed, up a country lane, in a hamlet that no-ones heard of, in deepest Norfolk.

The guy that started it was given an old engine in his teens & it took over his life & his garden. He has one of the engines that raised Tower Bridge & an engine that pumped water to the homes in Dover, so they have had to be dismantled, lifted out of their setting, moved to Norfolk, new settings made, the engines fitted, re-built & restored & then a building built around them! A mammoth operation for a tiny group of volunteers, the pumping engine is three storeys tall!

The astonishing thing about them is the details, they were just products build to do a job, but every little detail is beautifully finished, all the castings are superb, all the engraved brass plates are perfect, the rods & linkages are all pieces of art in their own right, A couple of the engines had flywheels 12ft in diameter, sand cast in two pieces, so you make a wooden 1/2 wheel, bury it in casting sand, remove the wood & pour molten iron in. BUT - you have to allow for thermal contraction as the iron cools, so the wooden master has to be bigger than the finished part,

there can't be any cracks as it cools, so all the shapes need to blend smoothly & the two 1/2 wheels have to match perfectly AND  - you have to calculate all that correctly with a slide rule.

We NEED to go back & see this all in steam, there are videos on the web site. But the most amazing part of this whole wonderful thing? It's FREE to get in! They do ask for donations, but there is no entry fee.

Thursday was going to be a rest day, but instead we went to the East Anglia Transport Museum where they have trams, trolley busses & a narrow gauge train to ride on as well as a few sheds full of exhibits. The site is really nicely laid out like a cobbled high street with the trams & trolley bus rumbling around, taking people for rides. A lot of the trams were beautiful, proper art deco both inside & out, so we had another full gates open to gates close sort of day.

But the Friday was the reason we were here at all, my present to my girlfriend at Christmas had been a tank driving experience at the Norfolk Tank Museum.

There are many "tank driving" experiences, a lot are combined with some other armyish activity like "an SAS patrol" or car crushing, but this one appealed because it was held on days when the museum was closed, giving "behind the scenes" access which I knew my girlfriend would like because of the photo opportunities. We were due to arrive at 2:00 & it was supposed to last about two hours, so we went to a local airfield & had a cooked breakfast watching the aeroplanes, they also were having a car show & fly in later so we thought we'd call in on the way home.

On arrival the owner said "we have to move the WWI tank to the bottom field, would you like a ride?" Oh yes we would! It's a replica & the story of it's making can be seen in a Channel 4 programme called "Guy Martin's WWI Tank".

Having clambered in through the hatches you can just see are open in the tank side, we sat on a "shelf" beside the two Lewis guns (this is a "female" tank, so has machine guns), there were five other people in there, two at the front driving, two at the back working the gears & another "gunner" opposite us on the other side of the engine - which started with an absolute cacophony, it's just in a steel box inside a bigger steel box, so the noise & heat are incredible - then the drivers start SHOUTING which gear they want back to the gearsmen & the fumes are making our eyes water & I realised it was pretty hellish for the tank crews even before people started shooting! So we set off, at one point one of the Lewis guns swung round & hit my girlfriend on the head, she didn't mind - being hit by a Lewis gun in a WWI tank is a privilege.

The man then told us the history of the tank & showed us round the museum, climbing up on the tanks to see inside, then he took us round the armoury, telling us the story of the guns & letting us handle them. My girlfriend said "that's a Martini-Henry rifle, "Zulu" is one of my favourite films" the man took it down, handed it to her & said "We've researched the serial number of this gun - we believe it was used at Rork's Drift". 

After that it was on to the driving, starting with a Haaglund BV206.

There was a demonstration lap when the man said interesting things, like "it has a 2.8 Cologne V6 like in a Capri" & "it's amphibious, I've driven it across a pond" Then it was my girlfriend's turn, it took some getting used to, but she was very good (if a little shreiky) & she did actually drive it over several humps like the picture. one second the windscreen was entirely full of sky, the next it was completely full of tracked mud, brilliant.

Then we moved on to the point of the exercise, driving the tank (actually a Saladin 6x6 armoured car) as other museum people drove Chieftain tanks around us. But there was a problem. 

Having gamely clambered up onto the rear deck, further up onto the turret, then got in through a hatch & slithered down into the driver's seat, she found she could either reach the pedals or see out through that hole in the front, but not both at the same time. various things were tried to no avail, so in the end I drove it which was good, but not what I'd wanted. Fortunately the rest of the day was sufficiently "EPIC" & she was quite happy standing in the turret being driven around. By the time we left it was 7:30 & far too late to call in at the aerodrome, especially as we'd had no lunch, as we were expecting to be home by 5:00.

And so it was the final day, but we wouldn't just be going home, oh no! we were extracting the absolute maximum juice from our little holiday by calling in for a tour of Historic Team Lotus Racing" at Hethel. 

This started with a chat from a long standing employee, who then too us round the workshops, telling stories & the history of the cars as we passed them, the upstairs is a "museum" with complete cars, some owned by Lotus, some not.

After that we went home.

It was brilliant, when I'd done the planning, I started with the tank museum & then looked at what else was interesting in the same area, when we booked the cottage, it was almost as expensive to book a few days as it was a week, so we looked for more things to do & we found REALLY interesting things, very close by. The tank, industrial steam, zoo & gardens were all less than 15 miles. But the thing that amazed me was that those things all started because a chap had a house with some land & a hobby which grew into an obsession, which became a museum / attraction.

What a brilliant week.