The sunshine has been glorious for the last couple of weeks, beautiful English summer weather. However this week has turned colder and a little wet, no doubt because Wimbledon is on just now and it always rains for Wimbledon.
I set off early under cloudy grey skies, firstly going south on the A34 and picking up the M4 westbound at Chieveley near Newbury. I’m off to South Wales, to Magor just between Newport and Chepstow to meet Lynne and pick up her late husband’s collection of Corgi trucks and Franklin Mint cars.
The season has changed again since my last trip out 3 weeks ago. The deep green of early summer is changing to the gold of high summer. The corn fields are ripening and the grasses on the road side wave seed heads of golden brown. First cut silage is in and the farmers are busy making hay and starting their second cut of silage, there are plenty of huge tractors towing bulk grass trailers on the country roads and the big balers are out in the fields.
I crossed over the Severn estuary using the magnificent Prince of Wales Bridge and was soon at Magor, it is just over the border. Lynne’s husband had been an engineer. At different times he looked after the huge dumpers used in the South Wales coal mines for moving waste to the slag heaps and later worked with the BRS fleet, British Road Services being the nationalised road transport company formed in 1948 and dissolved in 2000. Apparently he just loved big diesels and had a good collection of Corgi Classics Heavy Haulage. He also loved fine model engineering and had a super set of Franklin Mint cars.
I came back over the Prince of Wales bridge less than an hour after my first crossing into Wales and was amazed to see how quickly the tide had come in. On the way out it was mostly mud flats, on the way back it was deep, rushing water, spilling over into the fields on either side.
Then my day took a turn for the worse. I saw a shredded truck tyre on the road in front of me and did not have time to avoid driving over it. I tried my brakes and steering, both OK, there did not seem to be a puncture either so I carried on. After a few miles a car driver started signalling at me to stop. By now I was in some road works and there was no hard shoulder (emergency lane) so I had to keep going until the next slip road, where I stopped. It was scarily narrow and very busy. I was also a bit alarmed when, after I had stopped, the clutch pedal did not come back up, it stayed on the floor.
I could not see anything wrong with the van, so I looked under the back, nothing. I looked under the front and saw a piece of tyre wedged up behind the nearside front wheel. I grabbed the piece of tyre and tried to pull it out.
This is when I learned that truck tyres are not just made of rubber, they have thousands of sharp little steel wires running through them. After I had stopped whimpering and cleaned the blood off my hands I realised I could not get the bit of tyre out from under the van and I was going nowhere.
In roadworks sections of British motorways you are told to stay with your vehicle and wait for recovery, and after a little while a Traffic Officer came along in his car, stopped to see what had happened and called for a recovery truck.
I was taken to a nearby motorway services area where the AA van was waiting for me – I had called them earlier. The AA man and the recovery truck driver got the bit of tyre out from under the van at which time the clutch pedal came back up. between them they decided that the piece of tyre must have crushed the hose carrying hydraulic fluid from the pedal to the clutch slave cylinder. Now it was clear all appeared to be working normally.
However the AA patrol man decided to follow me to the next service area just to make sure I was OK. I called my remaining pick-ups planned for the day, explained what had happened, and headed for home with the AA van following behind me. As we pulled into the next service area the clutch pedal decided to stay down and I had no clutch, the van was no longer driveable and had a little puddle of hydraulic fluid on the tarmac underneath
The very nice AA man said he would tow the van back to my garage in Abingdon and off we set.
It’s a lot easier to spot classics if someone else is driving. The first one was a steam locomotive. It was being carried on the back of a low loader and had an escort vehicle behind.
OK, so it was a modern, heavy 8×4 Volvo pulling an articulated low loader, not a Diamond T ballast tractor with a girder trailer, but the loco was an 0-4-0 tank engine just like the one in the photo above.
I had spotted an event setting up in the fields by the motorway on my way west earlier in the day near Chippenham. This was the RONA Steam and Classic fair due to be held on the weekend of 8/9 July. This meant a steady stream of classic cars on the motorway heading towards it. The first one I saw was a teal blue Morris Marina parked on an overhead bridge with the driver leaning on the parapet watching the traffic go by
Next came an Austin Healey 3000 MkIII in Healey Blue and Old English White – the classic combo.
The Healey was closely followed by an early Sunbeam Alpine. Whenever I get the chance I like to bore people with the fact that when Ian Fleming wrote Dr No this is what a Sunbeam Alpine looked like. It was derived from the Sunbeam Talbot 90 which had been so successful in the Alpine Rally earlier in the 1950s, hence the name.
So instead of the rather gorgeous (MkII?) Alpine Sean Connery drives in the movie – it should have been one of these.
To continue the story of my very stressful day the AA man got me to Hurley Motors in Abingdon, who it has to be said were less than thrilled to see me and the van, their workshop being fully booked for the next two weeks. We got the van off and the AA man told me that my cover included a free hire car for 48 hours and got on the phone and fixed it up for me. This man did a splendid job and went far more than the extra mile, I waved him off with grateful thanks and started to walk home.
As I was walking along the phone rang and it was Enterprise car rental calling to arrange my replacement vehicle, which I got swapped for a van, obviously. They gave me this rather dinky little Fiat, and after popping into the Warehouse to tidy up some admin I headed gratefully for home. What a day!
I had been due to pick up two collections in Westbury, Wiltshire on Thursday which is near Devizes – as in ‘There was a young man from….’ If you don’t know the limerick, Google it, there are several versions and all are more or less coarse. Simon and Steve were both OK to postpone for a day so on Friday me and the little Fiat headed out again.
It is not my Vivaro, which has a brute of a twin turbo diesel. This one is a little more dainty and designed for urban deliveries with very low gearing and a feeble motor. Not the thing for long motorway hacks, it badly needed an overdrive top gear and just to make the experience more interesting – where the Vivaro has 6th gear on the gate, this one has reverse. On top of which the weather had come very hot again on Friday and the Fiat had no aircon (or Bluetooth, so no history podcast).
Steve has been a big Formula 1 fan, any sort of track racing really, and had picked up most of his collection at race days. It is an eclectic collection of racing cars collected over a long period with some really interesting pieces. I look forward to processing these models, there are some very unusual cars.
It was my second visit to Stuart to buy more of his late father’s collection. In addition to the Brumm, Vitesse etc above there are Corgi Classics, late Yesteryear and some other mixed diecast.
Steve was at work so had left the boxes of models in his porch – I nearly had a heart attack when he started to talk to me out of thin air. He has one of those smart doorbells and had seen me arrive on his phone, technology eh?
Time for one last classic as I left Westbury – a Rover P3 in maroon, and would you believe in the more than 200,000 diecasts I’ve handled at Little Wheels, we have never had one of these. This is a library photo from Wikipedia, interestingly the reg no is just a few different from the one on my wife’s BMW.
From time to time when I am on my travels, I have been known to stop at a roadside eatery to pick up a bacon roll. On this trip I had a real treat. I found Bel’s Cafe (Stoney Gutter Layby, Trowbridge BA14 6DH) on the way back from Westbury to Chippenham. Not only did she provide a more than excellent bacon roll, but she is a true petrol head. I’m not sure whether it is clear in the photo but the ‘Bel’s Cafe’ sign is covered in model cars, she also has an impressive collection of car badges too. I will be making detours this way on my future trips south and west.
What of the Vivaro? I think it is probably just a split hose, I hope it is no more than that. However the garage can’t promise to look at it for about 10 days unless they get a cancellation in the meantime; it is currently parked up at the rear of their workshop.
I’ve hired a van for next week’s collections – Cambridgeshire & Northampton, and will mostly be working from home the rest of the time. Hopefully by the following week I will be reunited with my trusty workhorse, I’m missing it already.
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What’s in the Van? – Home
15/16th June – Newcastle upon Tyne
8th June – Bournemouth, Ringwood & Bracknell
1st June – Diss, Stewartby & Brackley
25th May – Rickmansworth
12th May – Kingston & Fleet
4th May – Witham
21st April – Staines
12th April – Dereham
6th April – Warminster
30th March – Doncaster, Gainsborough & Peterborough
18/22nd March – Bedford & Epsom
15/16th March 2023 – London, Hemel Hempstead & Stafford
8th March 2023 – Warwick & Solihull
5th March 2023 – Huntingdon & Bedford
23rd February 2023 – Little Wheels Museum
16th February 2023 – Devon & Dorset
9th February 2023 – Nottinghamshire & Lincolnshire
2nd February 2023 – Gloucester & Hereford
What's in the Van? 
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