(alt. thread title = "what I did on my holidays")
Hi there,
A little while ago, I asked for some advice for interesting stuff to do whilst on my summer hols in a tent in Kent.
So this is some of what I did in some words and some pictures (those of you with ADHD, just scroll past the wordy bits):
Plan was to take an aged (just turned 37) car back to the county of her registration* (Kent), camp (in a tent), see some stuff that interested me, and see some stuff that interested the missus.... and not die, break anything (or dent), or fall out with each other in the process, before leisurely driving back along the coast
We packed the car comprehensively:
...one of the advantages of a type 3 is that there is no engine**, so you can use the bonnet like other vw's of the period, but also the boot:
Arriving at the ferry just in time to catch it, which is nice.
After negotiating with the traffic in Portsmouth to let us leave, we enjoyed a pleasant A and B-road journey up to the first camp, just north of Sevenoaks.
Pitching the tent took a matter of half-hours (we don't really do camping), and of course we chose the spot near a friendly campervan (no.3 of a total of 19 aircooleds spotted on the holiday)
The campsite wasn't great and I wouldn't go back there or recommend it to other RR-ers. Maybe they'd just had a hectic summer season or something, but generally the facilities seemed a bit tired and dirty.
Sevenoaks was an interesting place - scoped out the Ferrari/Maserati garage, which was nice, the Bentley garage seemed somehow more plush, but the nearby Brands Hatch Morgan garage was more interesting (saw loads of Morgans out as well).
Despite the automotive offerings, everyone in Sevenoaks seems to own a porsche - we lost count; or a Freelander (who all wanted to kill me it seemed); or had a private numberplate.
We went out for tea and found a marvelously retro Tesco:
Next morning I managed to make veggie fried breakfast on a campstove:
...before going to Chartwell (Winston Churchill's house) for the day.
Interesting place, but OT unless anyone wants to know more. Would happily recommend a visit. Pic there shows a load of fogeys blinged up - apparently the mayors of the london boroughs were visiting the same day
Anyway, Sunday was DTM race day @brands Hatch.
As recommended, we wandered around, being treated to some excellent close F3 racing,
resulting in me a) finding out I can't take photos of live motorsport for toffee and b) making do with the inevitable crashes for my photos:
The main event was simply awesome. The noise on warm up was inspiring, on the start was simply deafening
DTM cars don't even use wheels or tyres when racing:
^My fave (because it was a bit orange) - Gary Paffett, one of 6 Brits contesting the series.
Generally the racing was close and exciting, with enough overtaking and pit strategy to keep it interesting.
Mathias Lauda (yep, Niki's son) hit the barrier at the end of the pit straight pretty gosh-darned hard but got out and walked away.
^Check out how much gravel he swept up!
I also got this belated shot of someone spinning marvelously at the entrance of Clarke Curve:
Fortunately, there were some real photographers taking photos of the DTM action
Anyway, the real highlight of the day was the TTRS
Which is basically anything pre-94 2WD that is eligible for motor-racing and made at least 5000 examples of. What this means is that it is retro-rific door to door racing with a close field of massively varied interesting metal.
It's also sponsored by retro cars mag - chaps, if you're reading this it works - I bought the first car mag in about 2 years after the event and it was yours.
Speedman's suggestion of getting into the paddock didn't work, as it was closed unless you had bought the pit pass. However, we wandered past the paddock cafe, again with security stopping you going through the cafe, round the side to see the TTRS pits. I was content with taking a couple of pics through the fence:
...but we went further down and found the security at the back gate not as alert (I'm convinced the guy was asleep on his chair) so we sneaked in and then got loads more - check my photobucket for more if you want.
Racing was great - the silver XJS (Sam Clarke) was the king of drift [td]TM[/td] coming out of Druids every time
...and the Orange RX7 of Stacy Vickers stupendously went from last after clutch problems on the grid to finishing in the top 6 .
The second race was more great action, with the 80's DTM replica M3 (Andrew Busby) being squeezed into second after winning the 1st race.
We moved to the 2nd base at Folkestone the next day, and found ourselves with an awesome [url=http://www.siteseeker.co.uk/aspx/details.aspx?id=8070[/url]campsite[/url] that I'd be happy to recommend and expect to visit again if we're ever cross channel ferrying.
We did more stuff at that end of Kent, including a visit to the White Cliffs:
...and the lighthouse thats a couple of miles worthwhile pleasant walk...and Dover castle.
Then it was time to come back along the coast road via Hastings, which was ok; Dungeness - which was weird and when I make my Mad Max homage, that's where I'll shoot it - desolate, scary, weird place with a real interesting atmosphere. We need to go back as we missed the train
We also stopped off at Brighton on Madeira Drive in honour of the speed trials which we've missed - I demand several photos please.
Crawling through Worthing and Chichester made them appear thoroughly unpleasant, although I'm sure thats not the case. We ordered takeaway from the ferry and got back just in time to receive it.
So there we go - if anyone wants any more info/pics on anything in particular, let me know.
I need to put up a selection of the spots as well, but I can't be bothered to fight any more with photobucket, which I believe was created by the devil himself.
In summary, Kent is an odd place, some aspects of which I really like, other aspects slotted precisely into some of the stereotyping I had of the place already. We both want to go back and see/do more stuff, so it hasn't put us off!
Thanks again to all for your suggestions - was much appreciated and made us go worthwhile places we otherwise might not have gone.
Matt
*according to this interesting website, GW was actually registered in, but we went through Sussex and indeed Brighton so ner
**may not be 100% fact
Hi there,
A little while ago, I asked for some advice for interesting stuff to do whilst on my summer hols in a tent in Kent.
So this is some of what I did in some words and some pictures (those of you with ADHD, just scroll past the wordy bits):
Plan was to take an aged (just turned 37) car back to the county of her registration* (Kent), camp (in a tent), see some stuff that interested me, and see some stuff that interested the missus.... and not die, break anything (or dent), or fall out with each other in the process, before leisurely driving back along the coast
We packed the car comprehensively:
...one of the advantages of a type 3 is that there is no engine**, so you can use the bonnet like other vw's of the period, but also the boot:
Arriving at the ferry just in time to catch it, which is nice.
After negotiating with the traffic in Portsmouth to let us leave, we enjoyed a pleasant A and B-road journey up to the first camp, just north of Sevenoaks.
Pitching the tent took a matter of half-hours (we don't really do camping), and of course we chose the spot near a friendly campervan (no.3 of a total of 19 aircooleds spotted on the holiday)
The campsite wasn't great and I wouldn't go back there or recommend it to other RR-ers. Maybe they'd just had a hectic summer season or something, but generally the facilities seemed a bit tired and dirty.
Sevenoaks was an interesting place - scoped out the Ferrari/Maserati garage, which was nice, the Bentley garage seemed somehow more plush, but the nearby Brands Hatch Morgan garage was more interesting (saw loads of Morgans out as well).
Despite the automotive offerings, everyone in Sevenoaks seems to own a porsche - we lost count; or a Freelander (who all wanted to kill me it seemed); or had a private numberplate.
We went out for tea and found a marvelously retro Tesco:
Next morning I managed to make veggie fried breakfast on a campstove:
...before going to Chartwell (Winston Churchill's house) for the day.
Interesting place, but OT unless anyone wants to know more. Would happily recommend a visit. Pic there shows a load of fogeys blinged up - apparently the mayors of the london boroughs were visiting the same day
Anyway, Sunday was DTM race day @brands Hatch.
As recommended, we wandered around, being treated to some excellent close F3 racing,
resulting in me a) finding out I can't take photos of live motorsport for toffee and b) making do with the inevitable crashes for my photos:
The main event was simply awesome. The noise on warm up was inspiring, on the start was simply deafening
DTM cars don't even use wheels or tyres when racing:
^My fave (because it was a bit orange) - Gary Paffett, one of 6 Brits contesting the series.
Generally the racing was close and exciting, with enough overtaking and pit strategy to keep it interesting.
Mathias Lauda (yep, Niki's son) hit the barrier at the end of the pit straight pretty gosh-darned hard but got out and walked away.
^Check out how much gravel he swept up!
I also got this belated shot of someone spinning marvelously at the entrance of Clarke Curve:
Fortunately, there were some real photographers taking photos of the DTM action
Anyway, the real highlight of the day was the TTRS
Which is basically anything pre-94 2WD that is eligible for motor-racing and made at least 5000 examples of. What this means is that it is retro-rific door to door racing with a close field of massively varied interesting metal.
It's also sponsored by retro cars mag - chaps, if you're reading this it works - I bought the first car mag in about 2 years after the event and it was yours.
Speedman's suggestion of getting into the paddock didn't work, as it was closed unless you had bought the pit pass. However, we wandered past the paddock cafe, again with security stopping you going through the cafe, round the side to see the TTRS pits. I was content with taking a couple of pics through the fence:
...but we went further down and found the security at the back gate not as alert (I'm convinced the guy was asleep on his chair) so we sneaked in and then got loads more - check my photobucket for more if you want.
Racing was great - the silver XJS (Sam Clarke) was the king of drift [td]TM[/td] coming out of Druids every time
...and the Orange RX7 of Stacy Vickers stupendously went from last after clutch problems on the grid to finishing in the top 6 .
The second race was more great action, with the 80's DTM replica M3 (Andrew Busby) being squeezed into second after winning the 1st race.
We moved to the 2nd base at Folkestone the next day, and found ourselves with an awesome [url=http://www.siteseeker.co.uk/aspx/details.aspx?id=8070[/url]campsite[/url] that I'd be happy to recommend and expect to visit again if we're ever cross channel ferrying.
We did more stuff at that end of Kent, including a visit to the White Cliffs:
...and the lighthouse thats a couple of miles worthwhile pleasant walk...and Dover castle.
Then it was time to come back along the coast road via Hastings, which was ok; Dungeness - which was weird and when I make my Mad Max homage, that's where I'll shoot it - desolate, scary, weird place with a real interesting atmosphere. We need to go back as we missed the train
We also stopped off at Brighton on Madeira Drive in honour of the speed trials which we've missed - I demand several photos please.
Crawling through Worthing and Chichester made them appear thoroughly unpleasant, although I'm sure thats not the case. We ordered takeaway from the ferry and got back just in time to receive it.
So there we go - if anyone wants any more info/pics on anything in particular, let me know.
I need to put up a selection of the spots as well, but I can't be bothered to fight any more with photobucket, which I believe was created by the devil himself.
In summary, Kent is an odd place, some aspects of which I really like, other aspects slotted precisely into some of the stereotyping I had of the place already. We both want to go back and see/do more stuff, so it hasn't put us off!
Thanks again to all for your suggestions - was much appreciated and made us go worthwhile places we otherwise might not have gone.
Matt
*according to this interesting website, GW was actually registered in
Garden of England: Brighton
**may not be 100% fact