A chance meeting with Clive Southern in Guernsey last year paved the way for some great days out in 2004.
As many of you will know, Clive organises various shows that the club attends, taking along varying amounts of club branded kit to make them look as professional as possible. Following on from our chat in Guernsey, Clive and his wife Maureen offered to come along to the three Classic Car shows we attended this year and bring along the club marquee, flags, picture boards and a whole load of other neat stuff.
An added bonus was that the national committee agreed that we could offer a “show discount” on membership by waving the £5.00 joining fee for anyone who signed up at any of the shows.
The first show took place on Bank Holiday Monday 3rd May at Singleton Park in Swansea organised by SHOVR (Swansea Historic Vehicle Register).
I didn’t know what to expect and was surprised to see a huge Peugeot van, complete with MX-5 owners club livery pull up outside our house. Clive and I went down to the show ground ahead of the exhibitionists (or should that be exhibitors?) from our area to set it all up.
By the time everyone arrived, we had set up the marquee complete with all the picture boards, tables and chairs, loads of regalia and join up forms just in case. Ten cars turned up to make the stand complete and the elbow grease salesman almost ran out what with all the polishing going on.
The Swansea show is absolutely huge with over 650 cars present on 57 club stands. Much to our surprise and delight, we were voted 2nd place in best club stand, beaten only by the excellent 25th birthday display of the BL Mini club.
G’day Mate!
During the show, Joan and Ken Read from Melbourne who were visiting relatives in Swansea came over to see us. They looked splendid in their club jackets, and spent far more time with us than they’d originally planned, before leaving with some UK regalia to show off back home in Victoria.
Six days later on May 9th, Clive and Maureen were back again for the Bridgend Classic Car Club’s annual show held at Pencoed agricultural college grounds.
Again it was an early start to get the marquee up, even more important this time as the organisers don’t allocate spaces for clubs; it’s turn up and stake it out yourself. We only just staked enough room as it turned out because we ended up with 12 cars on the stand. It would have been 13 if I hadn’t failed to persuade the wife of one of the Triumph owners club members to move her MX-5 across to join us. Mind you, at least two of our members were a bit taken aback when I ushered them onto the stand rather than into the car park where they thought they were heading.
Pictures by Peter
Again a great day was had with loads of interest from the public and several new joiners.
The last of our shows for this year took place in the grounds of Caldicot Castle close to Chepstow and the original Severn Bridge.
There was an added complication this time because I was working in Edinburgh of the Saturday and got delayed until early on the Sunday morning before managing to fly home and drive direct to the show. The advantage was that by the time I arrived at Caldicot all the hard work had been done and I was so glad because that must have been one of the hottest days of the year so far!
Our numbers were swollen by the welcome arrival of a group from the North West Midlands area. Doris and John Tulley had contacted me some months before hand to ask if they could come along and, of course, it was a pleasure to see them all. At one point we had over twenty cars on our stand, which was by far the biggest in what, was quite a small show.
Pictures by Martyn
Unfortunately our stand was off the main field and subsequently had fewer visitors than we had hoped for, but nevertheless a good time was had by all and still more people joined up.