'Moose'
National
Exposure
UK Morris Minor Nationals
11-14 August 2000
We
drove across to Leamington Spa from Dublin in our trusty '67 convertible
'Bessie' on Thursday night before the UK Nationals 2000. Jonathon
from JLH Minor Restorations had been working really hard for the previous
three weeks getting our 'new' Trav all together and ready for the
show. It flew through the MoT on Tuesday and was now fully road legal.
YAHOO! :)
We
met Jonathon at his workshop first thing the next morning as he was
putting the final touches to 'Moose'. A last minute problem with the
water temperature sender unit put us in a mild panic but it was soon
sorted out with the help of a friendly engineer down the lane who
turned up a new adaptor unit on his lathe.
We
finally set off on the 2 1/2 hour trip up to Leeds at about 6pm. This
was the first time that Moose had been driven any further than the
end of the road let alone for that long. Trial by fire.
Within
30 seconds of joining the motorway a stone flew up and chipped the
windscreen on the driver's side. Ain't that just typical? The rest
of the journey was uneventful, my wife and I in Moose, Paul Steele
in his 1.4 K-series Traveller and Jonathon towing the caravan in his
Saab.
Harewood
House is a beautiful old English country manor built of a pale cream/yellow
stone and set in a lovely valley surrounded by trees and immaculate
green lawns. We drove straight over the 'Grade 1 Listed' lawns to
the designated trade stand area (the caravan dug in on a bump and
claimed some 'Grade 1 Listed' lawn as a souvenir) and made camp amongst
the other early arrival trade stands.
The
two Travellers were parked on the JLH Minor Restorations stand for
the whole weekend and unfortunately meant that our Trav wasn't eligible
for voting. Oh well, we were still happy hearing all the favourable
comments we got about the car on JLH's trade stand. It was quite fun
lurking around the car listening in on what other people were saying
about the car. Only once in the whole weekend did I hear someone say
something negative about it, and it was obviously a Pursit because
he said it was "sacrilidge to do that to a Minor". Each
to his own I suppose.
The
weekend passed uneventfully for us because we were on the trade stand
most of the time, but we did manage to annoy a few people with the
car stereo in Moose :) The 8am wake-up call with a round of 'The Dawn
of Man' (think of the theme tune for '2001 A Space Odessey') didn't
go down too well with a lady across the other side of the trade area.
It must have been the echo bouncing back off Harewood House that upset
her high fidelity ears ;)
Driving
Moose around the showgrounds and through the campsite was fun, but
the drive back to Guildford at the end of the weekend was just great!
I really love driving this car now. It handles brilliantly due to
the new front suspension design, and although it's very firm, the
ride is quite smooth. I love being able to pull out into a queue of
traffic and know that the car will accelerate more than fast enough
to avoid getting a BMW up my exhaust. It's definitely a cruiser -
can anyone tell me what speed I'm doing at 5500rpm in fifth on 15
inch wheels, because the speedo isn't calibrated properly yet?
