Summer sun, great people and an array of the finest air-cooled Volkswagens and Porsches displayed along the fairways and bunkers of the perfectly groomed Sandford Springs Golf Club made for a great weekend.
Get up early on Sunday mornings, and a whole host of adventures are waiting for you. This week, I headed over to Essex with some of the Porsche GB crew for a gentle drive.
Another Sunday and another breakfast meet-up. This was my first time attending Squadron Scramble Cars & Coffee at North Weald Airfield, over in Essex. I think I spent almost as long driving around the airfield perimeter road as I did driving from Kent. I hadn’t appreciated how expansive North Weald is on previous visits for drag racing events.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a bush or have zero interest in Porsches you cannot have missed the fact that year has been a notable one for the German car marque. Porsche have done a great job of celebrating the 70th anniversary of the first Porsche sports car, built in 1948.
This year summer has delivered us weeks of sunshine and heat, you could be forgiven for thinking we were in California. Why then, on the day the Luftgekühlt crew put on their inaugural event outside of LA, does the weather let us down with epic rainfall?
Bank Holiday Monday and another 911UK drive down to Rye for breakfast. We knew the roads wouldn’t be quiet as the early May bank holiday is synonymous with the Mayday Run which sees 1,000’s of biker make the run down the A21 to Hastings. The sheer number of bikes is always an impressive sight, but we decided to meet up earlier than usual to get a head start on our journey down to the south coast.
Beautiful weather teased out quite a few people for the May edition of Exclusively Porsche, which meant it was going to be a busy meet-up. I arrived a little late and was greeted by a throng of stunning Porsche’s and a few other classics for added interest. From Simon Moore’s beautiful 356 coupé, Toby’s 912 and a few 718’s representing the flat 4’s and various air-cooled 911’s plus a brace of watercoolers representing the flat 6’s – there really was something for everyone. It was also nice to see some other classics joining in the summer sun, such as the wonderful Triumph Herald and Paul Campbell’s 1953 VW ‘Zwitter’.
We were blessed with glorious sun for this months 911UK Kent breakfast meet at the Toby Carvery, Badger Mount. Given that it was the same day as Bister Heritage Sunday Scramble there was still a great turn out. While most were water-cooled later models, two guards red 80’s air-cooled 911’s graced the car park with their presence – one of which was still driven by the original owner. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to chat with him, but I’ll try and catch him at another event. Once again I found this group super friendly, welcoming and I left having made more new friends.
The third Sunday of the month means it’s time for a little jaunt over to East London’s Fish Island for Porsche Club GB’s R20 ‘Out East Porsche Meet’. This time Max and I hooked up with some Ding Dong Kinky Disciples in Chislehurst for pre-breakfast coffees and to cruise on over to the north side of the river – it’s safer for us south-Londoners to travel together. As the others left our meeting point I was held up at traffic lights, so decided to take a shortcut, hoping to catch them further up the A20. My shortcut must have been a good one as I arrived over at Beachy Road, E3 2NS a good 5 minutes before them.
Heading back from the Precision Porsche cars and coffee open day the sun was shining and East Sussex did it’s best to provide entertaining roads to play on. Once again it was a solo drive, but I was smiling all the way, happy to be out in my 997. What started off with just four cars in a car park soon turned into quite a large meet-up, with Porsches of all vintages. From Simon Moore’s beautiful 356 to a brand new 991.2 Targa.
A solo, picturesque drive this morning delivered me to the first of two Porsche events. East Sussex’s Precision Porsche provided hospitality to ease into Saturday morning, while their team of experts were on hand performing pre-booked health checks and answering questions. Their spotless workshops were open for us all to freely wander around and the body shop had a few non-Porsche beauties in various states of repair.
Bank holiday Monday and it was another early start to meet up with some of the 911UK crew at Westerham Brewery for a drive down to Rye harbour for breakfast. I think we had 11 911’s leave the brewery with the aim of meeting others down at the Bosun’s Bite. With the M25 shut, it meant the A25 was very busy eastbound and our cruise became two groups quite quickly. The wet weather, potholes and country lanes made for an interesting and spritely drive. We managed to keep our group of six cars together all the way down to Rye where we met up with the others.
I’d not been to the London Classic Car Show for a couple of years, so I was looking forward to an relaxed day full of great cars and great people. The Excel centre in London is a vast, featureless exhibition hall and I don’t feel it really does the cars justice. The organisers had dressed the central runway, albeit with just tyre walls, but something was lacking.
