The weather forecast was for a glorious weekend and it certainly delivered in Spades.
A few of us drove down on Friday to make a long weekend of it (via Street for some essential shoes). Ray, Marilyn, Michelle and I stayed at the Castle Inn Hotel in West Lulworth (separate rooms of course). Jane, Mark, Ceri and Lindsey also stayed there, but arrived on Saturday. Clive and Penny stayed in Corfe, Kevin and Alison stayed in West Lulworth, but at a different hotel. Paul found last minute B&B in East Lulworth.
We spent Friday evening in the Castle Inn having a great dinner and a few
drinkies, and we were treated to a weird puppet show by Ray. The place is truly
multi-cultural, the staff having accents from France, Australia, South Africa
and a few we didn't even recognise.
On the Saturday, Alison and Kevin led us on a romantic tour of their courting grounds of Wareham and the surrounding area. We had a great drive down to Portland Bill where for some reason, Kevin insisted on taking our pictures outside the Young Offenders Institution, one of three prisons on Portland!! We were joined by their friends from Guernsey, Cliff and Babs who peeked our interest in the Guernsey trip in October.
There were some interesting suntan patterns from the hot weather. Michelle and Lindsey had very fetching seatbelt marks and Ceri's head was a great shade.
Saturday evening was another chance for romance because we all embarrassed
Clive and Penny at the MX-5 barbecue by presenting them with a cake and
champagne to celebrate their wedding anniversary. The evening went well (much
better than anticipated) with decent food and a great jazz band to entertain us.
As soon as the sun was over the horizon, the Autoglym products came out.
Ceri went to work on "bleck" beauty, only to discover that the Southern UK insect population were also holding a convention at Lulworth and they decided to stage it on the car. I did a bit of superficial wiping because the hotel wouldn't let us use their hosepipe and I couldn't be bothered with all the bucketing about. I can only imagine what frenzied activity was taking place outside Paul's B&B at that time.
We'd ordered a packed lunch from the very reluctant landlord the night before which sounded like a great idea, but turned out to be a dead loss. We had all six of ours, but some other poor souls didn't get theirs. We found out later that it was 95% soggy bread and my vegetarian lunch turned out to be a Turkey roll. The burgers on the field would probably have been a better bet.
Anyway, off to the castle and as expected, we were all ushered into our colour groups. Mark and Jane were one of only three bronze cars and Clive and Penny were of a similar number of sunburst but surrounded by Yellow cars. I was very pleased to find that most of the Silver cars were Eunos and not MX-5. Lindsey and Ceri's bleck was one of a number of stunning cars (should have entered the BK5 guys).
Various stuff was available on the day. Some of us spent varying amounts of
money on boot racks, wind breaks, polish, pedal rubbers, new car (yes
that's right) etc. etc. Competitions were the BK5 where Paul came a creditable
third place but that should definitely have been higher!!
Ceri, Lindsey, Michelle, Mark S and I entered the manoeuvring competitions, the best of which was the one where the driver was blindfolded and the passenger had to guide him or her through a series of cones before stopping as close to the last one as possible. I managed to touch the last cone, but that wasn't as spectacular as the girl who surged forward straight over a large cone half way round the course. None of our group was placed in the manoeuvring competition but I'm still the Welsh Champion.
At about 4pm we arranged the cars, Keystone Cop style, in front of the castle
for a photo shoot and then set off for home as a group. The journey home was
good with the weather still great and the roads reasonably quiet.
After a brief stop in Magor Services, we all went our own way. A great weekend helped by the glorious weather and great organisation on the part of the MX-5 club (thanks if you ever read this).
Hi Ho Silver