Sunday was a lovely sunny day and a trip to our first Shelsley Walsh Breakfast Club of 2014.
As it was such a nice day I suspected it could be busy and so we were up and out by 8:15 in two cars. Seventoddler and myself in the TVR and with the Mondeo joining us so we could all go. The problems with a 2 seater car…
The drive there was nice and quiet, good to go through Malvern with little traffic and we were making good progress (the Mondeo was going quite fast enough) until we got stuck behind a steadily driven Triumph Stag with a few miles to go. For some reason it pulled into a Farmyard a mile from Shelsley but then reappeared a few minutes after we arrived.
The Mondeo was directed into the parking field used for race weekends and the TVR into the paddock. They must have been expecting a lot of cars to start filtering off the standard cars as we hadn’t seen that before.
At 08:55 the paddock was quite quiet – the exclusive area at the top was nearly full but the TVR parking further down was empty. When reversing into the tight spot I thought I may have made contact at the back with one of the pillars at very low speed, but I couldn’t see any damage on bodywork so maybe it was in my head.
After meeting up in the paddock (and getting the buggy which doesn’t fit in the TVR) we headed off to breakfast. There was a short queue, but by the time we left to sit outside the queue had already extended to the door. We were the first to choose to sit outside, and it was such a lovely morning I am surprised others hadn’t done so already.
Our friends who drive a Vauxhall Monaro arrived as we were starting breakfast. In a bad decision by those who filter the cars they had been sent to the overflow parking field not the paddock. I think this was a poor decisions as Monaros are quite rare and have very large engines. Meanwhile there were plenty of non-exotics in the paddock, including a fair few MX-5s (I like MX-5s, but there are a lot of them) and few very plain non-sporty cars and even a Rover Streetwise!
They went to join the queue which was now out of the door. This was a good ideas since by the time breakfast had finished the queue reached to the paddock! I have never seen this before, but when talking to a friend who had come for the first time (Mk3 Scirocco Turbo driver) he said that (from talking to someone he knows at the MAC) 290 people had registered to attend compared to a previous maximum from 2013 of 140. And that is the people who register, I am sure many don’t.
There were plenty of nice cars on display, as always. Owners of exotics arriving later were being pushed into overflow parking, although (unfairly?) I noticed that special space was made for a couple of Ferraris…
The track up the hill was closed while work is ongoing to repair damage following the recent wet weather. I hope that it completes before the first event of the year.
We stayed until 11:20, by which time the paddock was emptying before heading off. The little chap in the passenger seat fell asleep immediately and the drive back was good. An overtake on the Worcester bypass resulted in the car getting sprayed with a bit of grit 🙁 I hadn’t meant to get so close to the 350Z ahead that was also overtaking but it didn’t accelerate quite as rapidly as I had expected (but then 9.1 vs. 14.3 on the 0-100 is quite a difference).
Having had 2 drives out on consecutive days in nice weather the missing lines in the dash display had all gone bar one. I think dampness plays quite a big factor in than, and even keeping it in the garage isn’t quite enough. Nothing beats regular use, and I am hoping for a good year where I can finally get the brake and fueling issues sorted, at sensible cost, and have some fun with the car!