I had a very early start as it is four hours from Abingdon to Keighley, so it is only August and I’m back to setting off in the (semi) dark. It was a bit of a murky morning too, the weather has been cool and rainy for a couple of weeks now. By 5:30 am I’d said goodbye to the dog and set off north up the A34 for the M40. It is far to early for my wife to be up and doing, and today is our 38th wedding anniversary, so I’ll have to wait for the evening to wish her a happy anniversary.
I have three choices for getting to the M1 northbound from the M40. I can take the A43 past Silverstone, the A46/A45/M69 past Warwick and Coventry or stay on the M40 and cut across the M42 joining the M1 at Nottingham. Google Maps always wants to take the Silverstone route, but it’s all roundabouts that way, which is too much effort. The M42 is often slowed down by heavy traffic so my preferred route is the Warwick/Coventry one and since the new bit of the Coventry Bypass has been finished it is the easiest of the three.
On the motorway I started to notice Caterpillar Off-Road dumpers on the back of low loaders.
I know it’s a Volvo in the photo, but I don’t have one with a CAT, it is by Cararama by the way in 1:50 scale. It is not a particularly rare sight on British roads, but I saw five in less than an hour. I believe these are built in the UK, I had an idea it was at the old Euclid works in Scotland, but I may have dreamt that as I can’t find any evidence on the internet. Mind you as there were two of them working on the ground for a new housing estate at Gaydon as I drove past, and given the number of new houses being built everywhere, I should not be surprised to see so many on the move.
When I joined the M1 I spotted a very old Volvo truck, it may have been an F10, or even an earlier model from the 70s or 80s, I only got a quick glimpse..
There are not so many classic commercials about as classic cars because they tend to get worked to death and then scrapped. I often daydream about getting a Bedford CA and having it finished in Little Wheels livery, but there just aren’t any out there. The only only ones to survive are Dormobiles and ice cream vans.
It was a straight run up the M1 to pick up the M62 westbound. Google maps said to stay on the M1 for the next 90 miles, so off we go. Much of that part of the M1 has been turned into ‘Smart’ motorway,where the hard shoulder or emergency lane has been turned over to an extra lane off traffic. The theory is that should a vehicle break down there are sensors which activate overhead signs to close the lane to traffic. In practice when it actually happens there is mayhem. I’ve seen it a few times and there are a lot of brake lights and vehicles swerving all over the place. A number of people have already been killed as a result of breakdowns on Smart motorways, and there is a campaign to get rid of them. They terrify me.
After my 90 miles I switched to the M62 for a short way and came off at Bradford. On my way into Bradford, at Tong, I saw an intriguing VW Beetle parked in the side of the road. It had an after market bonnet lid styled to look like a 1940 US Ford.
Forgive my attempt to stitch two photos together. Microsoft Paint tends not to give such slick results as Photoshop, which we do not have. It is a clever idea which works well. This was a very effective customisation which had been professionally done with a top notch paint job and very fancy wheels.
I really do not like driving through Bradford. The city centre is in a bowl shaped depression and all the junctions are really awkward, some of them quite steep. Just to make it a bit more interesting half the city’s roads seem to be dug up too, which just does not help. There does not seem to be a way of bypassing the centre – you just have to go right through it.
Eventually me and the van wound our way up and out through Shipley and Saltaire and on into the Airdale Valley. These are familiar roads to me from many years ago. I was a student at Huddersfield Polytechnic, now Kirklees University, studying a foundation course in accountancy, you did not need a degree in those days. It was the mid 1970s and I lived with my parents in the Lake District in Cumbria. My route to Poly took me through Settle and Skipton through the dales to Bradford and on to Huddersfield. In those days I rode a Honda 175cc motorcycle and I have never been so cold in my life as when riding through the dales in the rain.
I was here to collect a second batch of models from Robert. Robert is a long time customer of Little Wheels and a very keen collector. In common with many very focused collectors he has periodic clear outs when he will sell some of his collection and concentrate in new areas. The very nice models I picked up from Robert are mostly Vanguards and Oxford Diecast. I look forward very much to working with these. I also got to meet his lovely bearded collie, a very nice and friendly dog.
When I headed back to Bradford I spotted a tiny little sign on a lamp post. It was not much bigger than a dinner plate and it told me I was entering a pollution charge zone. I may not have seen it were I not waiting in traffic, I certainly did not see any on my earlier trip through the city. I Googled it when I got home and sure enough I had to pay £9 to drive through the city. I’m sure the penalty charge would have been a lot more, in fact I know that it would as I have recently been caught out driving through Bath which has a similar scheme and as I did not see the notices I did not pay and had to pay the penalty. These charges are now in force in the following cities: Bath, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Portsmouth, Sheffield, and Tyneside so beware.
By now having zero feelings of goodwill towards the city of Bradford I managed to struggle though to the M62 again and headed east. My route took me beyond the M1 towards Hull, coming off the motorway at Pontefract. Another interesting truck hove into view carrying a wind turbine centre on the back. The photo is of a Corgi Scania T cab and King trailer. These really are huge when you see them close up.
Just before I came off the Motorway at Pontefract I spotted a really rare sight, Nicolas Bogies. These are a kind of modular flat trailer for carrying very large and heavy loads behind a ballast tractor. There are a number of 1:50 scale Corgi sets which feature them including this one. I’d hoped we had one in stock, so that I could set one up like the one I spotted in Yorkshire and take some new photos, but of course we don’t. The one I saw was a modern ballast tractor, like the one above, with two empty bogies on a draw bar behind it. The truck above has two sets of two bogies.
I’d not been to Pontefract before and it looks like it is worth spending a little time there. Pontefract Castle repeatedly turns up in my history podcasts which I listen to as I drive up and down the country. It seems like in Medieval times it was just remote enough to stick a prisoner who you want to quietly do away with, if you were that sort of king, and let’s face it, most of them were.
The castle was built immediately after the Norman Conquest as part of the plan to intimidate and subdue the English. It eventually came into the possession of John of Gaunt and through him to is son Henry Bolingbroke who deposed Richard II and declared himself King Henry IV. It is said that he had Richard starved to death at Pontefract.
Richard III used it as a venue to execute some of the Woodville family, they were the relatives of his late brother, King Henry IV’s wife. After Henry’s death Richard and the Woodvilles had a power struggle. It is supposed that Henry VIII’s 4th wife Catherine Howard was found up to no good with Thomas Culpepper when staying there leading, ultimately to her execution. It was a busy place.
It played an important part in the English Civil War being held by the Royalists and was besieged twice. Eventually falling to forces led by Oliver Cromwell who ordered it demolished after the wars were over in 1649, only a ruin remains.
I’m on the A roads heading south towards Gainsborough when I spotted a lovely Citroen DS on a flatbed coming the other way. It was a fairly early model and looked thoroughly restored. About 30 years ago I had this car’s ultimate successor, the XM, as a company car. It used to spend a lot of time on the back of a flatbed too. Whilst being a lovely car it was spectacularly unreliable and seemed to break down about once a week.
I was on my way to see Brian in Gainsborough. This was my second pick-up from him. He and his wife are in the process of downsizing and he is getting rid of his collection altogether. I’ve already had one van load of diecasts from him and my buddy Grant has taken his trains.
This is not that good a photo I’m afraid but you can see my van is well loaded with one more call to make. From Brian I took a number of Corgi trucks, quite a lot of Oxford Diecast and some spectacular larger scale Corgi planes, a Lancaster and a Vulcan.
My next call was in Leicester so I headed south again towards Newark and the A46 to Leicester. Last time I was here the potatoes were being planted, that was about Easter time. On this trip they are starting to harvest the earlies. The grain harvest is in full swing too as we have had a window of decent weather this week. Turning into one road I got a double-whammy, I was behind a tractor pulling a grain trailer and in front of that was another tractor with a slurry tanker on the back. The driver in front of me decided to take them both in one go, despite a motorbike coming the other way. The biker slowed down and pulled over, as I passed him I saw a heap of faded wreaths and bouquets in the roadside. Someone else had failed to make it.
I know I keep saying MGBs don’t count, but that is round Abingdon where you see them every day. On the road into Leicester I saw a lovely orangey red one with a black vinyl roof. On Sunday last my wife and I took the dog to the local garden centre, just like everybody else. There was an MGB meeting in a field next to the car park, there must have bean thirty of them. There was also a nice Marina estate and a Lotus Esprit in John Player Special colours.
Richard had been in the Fire Service all his working life and the collection I bought from him was, you guessed it, mostly fire engines with some ambulances thrown in.
Why, I wondered, did he had a box full of nearly identical Corgi Juniors fire engines? Robert was Watch Leader (I hope I got that right) and used them in training sessions. He would pick a building in Leicester and divide his men into two teams and get them to deploy appliances, men and kit around a plan of the building to work out the best way of tackling a fire.
When leaving Leicester I saw a lovely Austin Maxi in Pageant Blue. It must have been just restored and repainted as it looked like it was fresh from the dealership. We have never had a model Maxi at Little Wheels so I had to pinch the photo from the Oxford Diecast website. This of course means that if they are in the Oxford Diecast range they will be coming to us soon. The car in the photo is 1:76 scale.
My last classic today was a Mini Clubman Estate. The model is in 1:18 scale by Cult. I know that this car must have been restored as my first ever car was a Mini Clubman and the bodywork was rotted through at three years old. Any one of them still on the road today, as opposed to having rusted away to nothing, must have had deep surgery to the bodywork.
I finally made it home at 4:30pm, 11 hours after I set off, having covered 425 miles. Then it was time to do the daily Little Wheels admin as Phil is away at a festival, camping, in Wales. He’s probably getting a bit wet. It was all done in the end, just in time for a restorative glass sitting under my vines before a celebratory wedding anniversary meal with just me, my wife and the dog.
Next week I’m off to Shrewsbury to pick up a mixed collection from Nigel.
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What’s in the Van? – Home
3rd August – Bedford
27th July – Worthing
13th July – Chatteris, Hinckley & Nuneaton
6/7th July – Magor & Westbury
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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