Who needs a
yellow sticker to get into pride of place at the Group Photo? Don't
forget, the camera never lies?
The
first "Drive it Day" turned out to be pretty wet and
miserable, in the South East of England anyway. We looked at the map and
there was no doubt about it, the only sensible way from St. Albans to
Brooklands was a virtually straight line along the M25. So off we set in
the 1937 Drophead Flying 12, closely followed by our friends Maurice and
Di in their Swallow Dorretti. We felt a little out of our depth at a
steady 50mph but fortunately it was early on Sunday morning and the
traffic was fairly light.
Brooklands
is the birthplace of Motor Racing in Britain, built in 1907 and we soon
found some of the banking and the restored control tower for the
airfield that was once in the centre of the track. The trouble is,
like so many things these days, these were actually in what is now a
"Tesco's " Carpark and some 2 miles away from the Museum area
that was our destination. Anyway, completely unassisted by signs, we
spotted some other Triumphs who seemed to know were they were going and
tagged along behind them.
All
the pre-war Standards and Triumphs were parked together in the paddock
outside the old Clubhouse and we were able to squeeze in all the other
Standards as well. I didn't count but we were 15 or so strong.
Completely dwarfed by hundreds of Triumphs as usual but making up for it
in the quality and variety of our display, as I always say....
Those
of you that haven't visited Brooklands yet really ought to make an
effort. There are lots of vintage cars, motorcycles, bikes and aircraft
on display, the largest being an early Concorde. This had to be
"knocked down" into kit form in order to make the journey by
road to the site, but the museum have made a fantastic job of (almost)
putting it back together. The only missing part now is the tail fin,
which stands ready to be bolted in place. All the visitors were given a
free guided tour inside the fuselage, though the cockpit wasn't opened
for us. This was one of the highlights of the day for us, one of the
others being the ability to walk a stretch of the famous banking.
As
usual you can see enlargements of all the photos just by clicking on
them:
