IT WAS A cold, wet January, and the postman had just shoved the latest Austin-Healey Club magazine RevCounter through our letterbox. Despite owning our ’Healey 3000 MkIII for 36 years, we had never attended any club events. I remain a member mainly because it’s a condition of my classic car insurance policy.
While flicking through the glossy pages of the magazine, my attention was drawn to an ad for a gathering over the May Bank Holiday weekend in the Yorkshire Dales. We didn’t have a road trip planned for ‘171 YNO’, so why not head north? We love the Dales, though wondered if we would survive a club bash, as we are not ‘clubby’ people.
The rain started as we left East Kent and headed north, top down, the motorways awash with surface water and spray from 18-wheelers. The ’Healey became distinctly twitchy under braking when traffic slowed to a crawl, and even cruising up the good old A1 at 55mph in overdrive top felt a bit sketchy. We were the last car to arrive at the Cedar Court Hotel in Harrogate to sign on and collect our welcome packs, after a 280-mile drive in the worst conditions we have experienced in more than three decades of classic car ownership.
First impressions, as they say, are everything. Looking through the weekend’s route book, with its tulip road instructions, reminded me of my first Classic Marathon in 1991. Morale rose after the day’s hammering, when we joined the other crews of around 50 cars for our welcome dinner.
Come Saturday morning, I zeroed the trip meter and we left the hotel, my wife Beverley clutching the road book as a first-time navigator. All went well until a road accident in Pateley Bridge forced a U-turn and rapid diversion, our back-up Waze navigation app sending us plungeing down a one-in-six hill to re-join the route. All good, but our trip readings were out of sync and Beverley had to rely on the route descriptions.
We continued across the Dales on narrow Postman Pat roads flanked by dry stone walls, a beautiful and unique landscape but often
