National Exposure UK Morris Minor Nationals 11-14 August 2000
26 February 2000
We drove across to Leamington Spa from Dublin in our trusty '67 convertible 'Bessie' on Thursday night before the UK Nationals 2000. Jonathon from JLH Minor Restorations had been working really hard for the previous three weeks getting our 'new' Trav all together and ready for the show. It flew through the MoT on Tuesday and was now fully road legal. YAHOO! :)
We met Jonathon at his workshop first thing the next morning as he was putting the final touches to 'Moose'. A last minute problem with the water temperature sender unit put us in a mild panic but it was soon sorted out with the help of a friendly engineer down the lane who turned up a new adaptor unit on his lathe.
We finally set off on the 2 1/2 hour trip up to Leeds at about 6pm. This was the first time that Moose had been driven any further than the end of the road let alone for that long. Trial by fire.
And wouldn't you know it?! Within 30 seconds of joining the motorway a stone flew up and chipped the windscreen on the driver's side. Ain't that just typical? The rest of the journey was uneventful, my wife and I in Moose, Paul Steele in his 1.4 K-series Traveller and Jonathon towing the caravan in his Saab.
Harewood House is a beautiful old English country manor built of a pale cream/yellow stone and set in a lovely valley surrounded by trees and immaculate green lawns. We drove straight over the 'Grade 1 Listed' lawns to the designated trade stand area (the caravan dug in on a bump and claimed some 'Grade 1 Listed' lawn as a souvenir) and made camp amongst the other early arrival trade stands.
The two Travellers were parked on the JLH Minor Restorations stand for the whole weekend and unfortunately meant that our Trav wasn't eligible for voting. Oh well, we were still happy hearing all the favourable comments we got about the car on JLH's trade stand. It was quite fun lurking around the car listening in on what other people were saying about the car. Only once in the whole weekend did I hear someone say something negative about it, and it was obviously a Purist because he said it was "sacrilidge to do that to a Minor". Each to his own I suppose.
The weekend passed uneventfully for us because we were on the trade stand most of the time, but we did manage to annoy a few people with the car stereo in Moose :) The 8am wake-up call with a round of 'The Dawn of Man' (think of the theme tune for '2001 A Space Odessey') didn't go down too well with a lady across the other side of the trade area. It must have been the echo bouncing back off Harewood House that upset her high fidelity ears
Driving Moose around the showgrounds and through the campsite was fun, but the drive back to Guildford at the end of the weekend was just great! I really love driving this car now. It handles brilliantly due to the new front suspension design, and although it's very firm, the ride is quite smooth. I love being able to pull out into a queue of traffic and know that the car will accelerate more than fast enough to avoid getting a BMW up my exhaust. It's definitely a cruiser - can anyone tell me what speed I'm doing at 5500rpm in fifth on 15 inch wheels, because the speedo isn't calibrated properly yet? (I've since worked out that I was cruising at 110mph ... shhh don't tell a soul ...
