...Mini Madness (Part two!)

…continued.
I’ve always linked Brighton to scooters and our yearly holiday beginning with the Isle of Wight. It wasn’t until I began writing this blog it actually struck me that the Mini Rally was the beginning of so many things. It was really the first adventure Martyn and I ever embarked upon. It was our first road trip and the furthest we had ever travelled together. It was our very first rally. Looking at all the minis on Madeira Drive this weekend I could see so many similarities between the Scooter scene and the Mini scene. There was a mixture of old and new, classic and customised, clubs and solo travellers. Even the slogans they displayed in various different forms had similar themes to those found on scooter rallies.
As we headed South that day in 1993 we had no idea that this first trip to Brighton would certainly not be the last. We got lost on the M25 which, I believe is something you have to do on your first visit. We crossed the river and eventually found our way to Crystal Palace where we set up camp for the night and had a barbeque. It was an unusual evening and neither of us slept well. The sound of parties, car horns and sirens sounding throughout the city kept us awake most of the night and we were ready to get up and go to Brighton by the time morning came around. As we queued up to take our place in the convoy you could sense the excitement in the air. Clubs gathered together, the sound of air horns was deafening and smoke filled the air and our car! We were off… There were minis as far as the eye could see it was an amazing sight. Everyone was smiling and waving to each other. As the journey progressed more and more minis could be seen at the side of the road, bonnet up owner peering inside at the engine. The gaps in the convoy got bigger and we were glad we had brought a map especially when the mini we were following turned out not to be part of the rally just some poor soul trying get home. After a small diversion we found ourselves in Brighton and on Madeira Drive. It was very exciting, we actually thought there were a lot of people there at the time, little did we know it was only the start of what was to become one of the biggest events on the Mini owners calendar. Nothing else much happened that day, we ate chips, went on the Pier and bumped into somebody we knew from home. It was all a bit of an anticlimax to be honest. We expected a party to be going on somewhere but nobody seemed to know of anything going on. They were all going home! We were tired from the lack of sleep the night before and didn’t want to face the long journey home. We were also skint, there was no thought of B & B’s back then they were well out of our price range. We headed back to Crystal palace with the thought that we might able to stop there for the night again. It wasn’t to be though, the place was disserted and not very inviting so we hit the road. I was desperately looking through the map for a possible campsite that didn’t take us too far off route. What I found was Spellbrook! The name should have been a hint and we should have carried on but Martyn was too tired to carry on driving and there appeared to be a problem with the exhaust (or lack of...!) so we made for Spellbrook and the farmers field we had been directed to. Martyn made some repairs to the exhaust and we put the tent up.  If we thought we would get some sleep here we were very much mistaken. A huge thunder storm with sheet and fork lightning woke us up and we peered outside to be greeted with the vision of people walking around the fields with shotguns in their hands.  We headed for the car!!  I'm not sure why we thought we were safer from the lightening in a tin box or that bullets wouldn't go through the glass windows.  It just seemed like the best thing to do at the time! It was all in all quite a terrifying ordeal. How it didn’t put us off travelling anywhere in the future I’ll never know. One thing I do know is that I will never forget a spooky little place somewhere near Cambridge called Spellbrook! We survived the night and made our way home with a tale to tell. It had been an adventure. That’s the thing with travelling you never know what’s going to happen. You can make plans if you like or just set off and see what happens. Either way you have to expect the unexpected and hope you survive to tell the tale. The closest calls always make for the best stories…
At the age of eighteen we had no idea what was around the corner. We didn’t know what would happen to us both while I was away at University. We didn’t know how we would change as people and what would happen when I returned to the Calder Valley. We certainly didn’t know that at the age of 21 we would set off once more on a journey south that would take us around France on a Vespa. Or that by the age of 22 we would buy our first boat. We certainly never entertained the idea that we would take our first boat on an adventure through the canals and tidal rivers of England and end up in a town called Goole where we would build a boat that would take us south again. It never crossed my mind that day in Brighton as we ate chips on the pier that one day I would end up living in Brighton… Maybe that night in Spellbrook as the skies collided someone was setting our destiny…?

Mini Madnes...

I am now into my third week of being gainfully employed and so far it’s been interesting. The people I work with are very nice which is always a huge bonus and the four hour day is lovely if not a little strange to me still. In my last job I worked relatively long hours and had to commute 15 miles each way. Now my working hours are much more civilised and my commute involves a 10 minute walk through the marina. Oh the stress of it all…! I feel very lucky indeed and glad I didn’t succumb to the agencies who promised me I would be perfect for the buyers position in the factory down the road. It will still be a stretch on the finances from time to time but I have convinced Martyn it’s worth it to have a happy me to come home to on an evening. That and the added advantage of having his washing done, boat (reasonably) tidy and food (sometimes it’s edible!) on the table.
As the year begins to fly by at an astonishing rate the events in Brighton seem to multiply week after week. We have the Brighton Festival, The Fringe Festival, there are open house events, photography festivals and most importantly the Mini festival. We have been waiting for the Mini festival to arrive and it did, this weekend 15^th May 2011. We awoke a little late after making the most of Saturday night which led into Sunday morning. Sometimes we have no idea when to go to bed although I have a suspicion that most of the evening are usually spent fast asleep! We tried to watch a film on Friday night, I saw the first bit and the last bit and Martyn saw most of the middle, between us we managed to piece most of it together, I digress… We awoke to the sound of beeping horns and screeching tyres and surmised the minis were in town. We tried to gather our limbs and finally hit Madeira Drive around lunchtime, it was heaving! When there is an event on Madeira Drive it usually ends quite a long way away from the marina, not today. There were row upon row of minis, flags flying, club banners everywhere the atmosphere was amazing. We couldn’t believe it. It was as if as one child noted ‘ all the minis in the country must be here!’. They stretched from one end of Madeira Drive to the other and they were still arriving as we made our way towards the pier. It was quite a shock and very different to the rally we experienced back in 1993. Martyn first car was a mini KOM 14P. It was green, well greeny yellow, not the best colour but it was good fun. Minis somehow have a way of making you smile, they are cute if you take away the rust, the oil and danger factor. We had fun in the mini and decided we would do something daring, something that involved travelling a long way… down South OMG! We registered for the London to Brighton Mini Rally and looked forward to the adventure then disaster struck! It think it must have been Easter because I was at home and not in Hull at University. I was waiting for Martyn to pick me up to take me to the pictures, he was late and I was getting anxious, he was very rarely late as he only lived in the next village on from mine. In the days before mobile phones there was nothing you could do but wait a while then start ringing round peoples houses if you were looking for someone. It was getting close to the point where I was going to ring his Dad when he turned up at the doorstep, without the mini. “Where’s the car?” I asked “Upside down on the heights road” he replied. My heart skipped a beat and everything went in slow motion. I remember my Dad got a sweeping brush and we set off in the sooty van back to the scene of the accident. It looked dreadful. The passenger side roof was completely caved in and poor old KOM sat on her roof facing the wrong way. Thank god it hadn’t gone down the hillside. It was so close to the edge, if he’d gone down there who knows when we would have found him…! Poor old Martyn was then told off for leaving the scene of an accident - what else are you supposed to do when you’re in the middle of no-where? And had to watch his little car be towed away never to be seen again. It was a very sad day and I think the guy who ran him off the road got away with it. Our dreams of attending the London to Brighton Mini Rally were shattered and we thought that was the end of it. Luckily our parent took pity on us and another mini was sourced and prepared for the grand trip! Our first rally - of any kind - Wahoo!! She was a 1275 GT in blue and she was lovely. We left Hull in may 1993 took our first trip over the Humber Bridge and headed south. We were bound for Crystal Palace and a small place by the sea called Brighton, which apparently is a little bit like Hebden Bridge by the sea…! (To be continued…)