This year for your Bank Holiday amusement there was a choice of two runs on the same day, either to Hastings with Ian or - as an alternative - to Bexhill with Gary. The attraction of Hastings was, well, thousands of bikes and people to look at amidst the usual scrum. The attraction of Bexhill was a festival of motoring, promising a wide variety of vehicles and spectacles.
I threw in my lot with the Bexhill option, as you will have guessed already, so it was a leisurely start at 10:30 a.m. outside the Pied Bull. So leisurely in fact that Gary and Jackie were about the last to arrive, but there was no desperate rush. Anyway we set off in the direction of Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells which lead us eventually to Bexhill sea front. We found a few spaces in which to park a bike (so we did) and started to walk along the front to where the main show area was located, bumping onto Neil on the way.
There was certainly a wide range of vehicles there, commencing chronologically with some ancient and rickety looking steam carriages. The most eye-catching of these had driving wheels of about seven feet in diameter and a passenger compartment which was the same size and shape as a stagecoach but was suspended on leaf springs about eight feet in the air! When this creation took to the road it made slow and pretty wobbly progress, but at least it went. I did not envy the custodians of that piece of history much, because transporting it and keeping it in working order looked like a full-time job!
Following on at a slightly faster pace were examples from the whole gamut of early motoring including a Ford Model T with a couple of Keystone Cops on board, plus vintage examples of a Rolls Royce, a Lagonda and the more humble Austin Seven, to name but a few of the many cars that paraded down the designated area while we watched.
During a lull we proceeded along the promenade, picking up some nosh on the way. At the far end was a field with a small auto jumble and a variety of vintage and "enthusiast" cars on display. By enthusiast I mean, well anything really, including a Ford Granada estate that had been converted into a low-rider pickup with air suspension that kept it barely clear of the ground plus the usual collection of extroverts showing their American motors from the fifties, sixties and seventies. Off to the East end of town there was a steep incline, up which was being staged (as far as I could tell) a run-what-you-brung hill-climb. How it was organised I couldn't tell but there was a queue of vehicles of every size and shape, all with pretensions to having a bit of "oomph".
The percentage of bikes was limited to say the least, with only a Gilera stand to represent the current-day industry, but this was compensated for in part by the diversity of four-wheeled vehicles. Most unusual, not to say impressive, was a statically-displayed one-off creation in the style of a vintage race car but with a twelve cylinder Merlin engine in it. As in Spitfire fighter 'plane... I was lucky enough to be in the vicinity when the owner chose to start it up and the sound was, well, loud and mighty. How it would handle on the road (and stop from speed) was left to your imagination. A radio report on it earlier in the day included the information that it had taken 19 years to put together!
In a similar high-performance vein there was a short rolling demonstration of a compact drag car which was wheeled out and fired up. Having not frequented Santa Pod I only had the announcer's clear and oft-repeated warning to go on that it was going to make a lot of noise. And we were not disappointed - the sound of a methanol-burning V8 under load is a noise-fest of ear-ringing intensity.
Along the length of the promenade there were rock'n'roll bands, ride simulators and all sorts of other distractions, not to mention hundreds of people enjoying the good weather. Ian and Julie even rode along the coast from Hastings for a quick shufti themselves, managing to bump in to some but not all of the early arrivers.
I left town at about four o'clock with Gary, Jackie and John while the good weather was still favouring us, and after a while we joined the general exodus up the A21. Who should catch up with us during a congested section but Ian and Julie who had left Bexhill a while later. As soon as the first bit of clear road presented itself, Ian was off - as only he knows how! The rest of us made a steady progress home, there to contemplate the imminent start of another, if shortened, working week.