Spring Dub 2018

It feels like forever since we saw any sunshine, although it does seem as though winter may finally be giving way to spring.  Having fallen victim to the snow back in March, this year’s Spring Dub up at the Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate had been rescheduled for the middle of April so Mat and I spent a very pleasant couple of hours up there this weekend.  It seems it’s been three years since I last went – I have genuinely no idea where that went!

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Clique 53 Spring Classics

I’d not seen Mark and Sheila since before Christmas so when I saw an Instagram post advertising the Clique 53 Spring Classics show at Newstead Abbey, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to pop down to Scrooby and have a catch up on the Saturday before heading to the show on the Sunday.  Due to a little trip to Vienna to see Metallica this weekend, a trip to Sandown Park for the Volksworld Show just wasn’t feasible. As seems to be standard practice these days I had had to pop into the folks’ en route to sort some of their constant IT issues and whilst I was over there they mentioned that Newstead Abbey just happened to be where they got engaged back in the 60s. We’re such a communicative family.

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Snow More Dodgy Steering

It’s the middle of March and it’s snowing. Again. The snow also dissuaded me from taking Clarence up to Coniston when we went up for my birthday last month. It was probably the right call, although I’m not sure Matt would thank me for making him take his new car down the road from Langdale that goes past Blea Tarn. It’s a touch on the narrow side. We had a cracking few days staying at the Black Bull, although sadly the snow stopped us from getting to the top of the Old Man. There was plenty of delicious beer though!

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Trabis, Tattoos and Touchdowns

It seems I didn’t write a massive amount last year. The root cause of that is most likely my occasionally questionable mental health but let’s not dwell on that. I’m going to try and remedy that (both the writing and the mental health) in 2018 and we’ll kick off with putting some flesh on the bones of 2017. It seems a fair amount happened – although this is by no means exhaustive – so strap yourselves in for a long one! I think I’m finally getting my head around the GoPro, so there are a few more videos in this post, the one in the Trabi is probably my favorite.

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Hello Stranger

It seems that certain aspects of the 90s are making making something of a resurgence (checked shirts, for example). One thing that I thought was unlikely make a comeback was a black beetle owned by an old school pal of mine, Jim. I was more than a little cynical, therefore, when Brad mentioned that a restoration might potentially be on the cards. The bug – named Lucille after BB King’s black Gibson – has been languishing in his old man’s garage for something like 20 years, ever since he moved down to the bright lights of London town. The last time I saw it was back in 2008 when I was toying with the idea of buying it from him – on that occasion I decided it needed too much work for it to be viable for me.

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VW Festival 2017

Looking back at the calendar I missed out on a trip to Harewood House last year because we were at the Great British Beer Festival at Olympia (poor old me), so this August it was great to take advantage of one of the few sunny Sunday afternoons of the summer and jump in the bug and head up the A61 for VW Festival 2017.

Previous years have seen the water cooled stuff feature more prominently but this year there definitely seemed to be a greater number of aircooled cars on show. One thing that doesn’t change is the ridiculously high standard of some of the cars. The top 3 aircooled cars – in particular the gorgeous black oval that took top spot – were stunning.

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