Justine was on holiday so I was standing in for her. This meant going to the warehouse before getting on the road and creating the day’s invoices and mailing labels. As I’d arranged to meet John in Berkhamstead at 9.00am, that meant a very early start. I was on the road by 7:30am with the paperwork for the day’s pack-up done and ready for when the rest of the team came in at nine.
Autumn is nearly here. The fields and hedges look tired and ready for the season to change. The leaves are beginning to turn and it is a bit of a murky start, but we are enjoying an Indian summer this year and the day got out nice, bright and sunny later on.
I bagged my first classic car very early in my trip. Just as I got on the A420 heading towards Oxford there was a lovely sight coming the other way. A Bentley T Series Convertible in white with a white hood. This car is from the early 70s and was the Bentley version of the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. The model is by Minichamps in 1:43 scale.
My route today is all A roads, no motorway, which always suits me better. I went north on the A34 to Bicester and bypassed the town on the A41 heading for Aylesbury. Just as I was queuing for the roundabout to cross the M40 there was a flash of red on the opposite carriageway.
It was another car from the 1970s, a Fiat X 1/9. It is the second one of these I’ve spotted in recent weeks, and both in the Bicester area. There are really not that many of them around any more. The model is by Schuco in 1:43 scale
My route to Aylesbury took me through the village of Waddeston and past the gates of Waddeston Manor. This is a curious house, being built by the Rothschilds in the latter half of the 19th Century in a sort of mock-renaissance style. The Rothschild Trust still manage the property although it is now owned by the National Trust. They hold seasonal events in the grounds, like Christmas markets and light displays. We have been a number of times with our son and daughter in law and our granddaughter.
I find it an odd-looking building. It is like they started building it at one end and forgot what they were doing half way across. nothing matches or balances.
From its completion in 1880 it was the venue for ultra posh and luxurious weekend house parties and fox hunting. It did wartime service as a home for evacuated children, including some Jewish children from Frankfurt. It was left to the National Trust in the 1950s.
After Waddeston I passed through the building site that is to become HS2, the new high-speed railway. Which coincidentally was canned by the Prime Minister on the same day. The works for this railway are nothing short of environmental vandalism. The route has been brutally hacked through the countryside and the damage has to be seen to be believed. The roads round about have also been smashed up by the heavy lorries supporting the works.
This was only ever a vanity project dreamed up by politicians, costing tens of billions and delivering no benefit.
Aylesbury came next, bang on rush hour, which means the opposite to rushing. The town is not bypassed so you go right through the middle.
It is Roald Dahl country, in later life he lived at Great Missenden nearby and I was charmed to see that someone had painted a lovely picture of the Fantastic Mr Fox on one of the BT Openreach street corner connection boxes. My wife and I are taking our granddaughter to the Roald Dahl museum shortly.
Also in Aylesbury (on 4th October mind) I saw my first set of Christmas lights. Two terraced houses, side by side, were covered in cascades of LED lights. That is really too early.
After spending an hour grinding through the Aylesbury traffic I plodded on to Berkhamstead. This is a pretty little town in a narrow valley. I dropped into the town from the west and crossed the high street before exiting past the ruins of the castle, pictured above.
Berkhamstead Castle is one of many built straight after the Norman Conquest. William 1st brutally subdued England by portioning out the land to his nobles and instructing them to build big castles across the country. Where there was resistance, as in the north of England and the Fens in the east he simply sent in his soldiers to kill everyone, burn the crops and slaughter the livestock so that any survivors would starve to death.
Later on the castle was involved with the attempted invasion of England by the French under the future King Louis VIII. Louis besieged the castle, using trebuchets for 20 days, after which the garrison surrendered. Louis was not finally defeated until the Battle of Lincoln where the wonderful William Marshall dealt with him good and proper.
When the castle was returned to Royal hands it eventually became the home of Edward the Black Prince, heir to Edward III. The Black Prince died before his father in 1376 at Berkhamstead, being worn out by a lifetime of fighting in France, instead his infant son Richard inherited the crown.
Under Richard II the castle’s renovation work was overseen by Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the Canterbury Tales, who was the King’s clerk at the time.
My visit to the town was in search of buses. This was my third trip to John’s house, he is disposing of his buses a batch at a time as he moves the focus of his collection to static steam locomotives. These are mostly in O Gauge and beautifully hand-built. They are lovely items.
I was here though to collect buses in 1:76, 1:50 and 1:24 scale. This is probably the last collection of Corgi 1:50 scale buses I will buy. Demand is falling away and the market is flooded with them, the same can be said of some of the 1:76 scale buses too, mostly the early release EFE and Corgi OOC ranges which are struggling to find a market just now.
The main reason for my visit was John’s Sun Star Bedford OB coaches and AEC Routemaster buses in 1:24 scale. There were 17 of them, now all safely in my warehouse and currently going on sale. The detail on these models is superb. Everything opens that is supposed to open and all the detail is there, down to the plug leads and the first aid kit tucked inside the driver’s door.
The first of them, the King Alfred Bedford OB, goes on sale on October 10th.
As I turned and headed back to the warehouse I met this car on the road to Berkhamstead.
A Ferrari Enzo in red, Rosso Corsa. This model is by Hot Wheels in 1:18 scale.
My last classic of the day was close to the warehouse. The road from Kingston Bagpuize to Frilford is not that wide and coming towards me was a man on a bike. Coming up behind him was a scruffy old E-Type Jaguar in black with a black hood.
It was being driven by a woman of about my age who was obviously in a hurry, she just swung out to pass the bike and I had to pull over and stop to avoid the head-on. Both car and driver were more than 60 years old, the mystery is how they have survived that long.
The model is by Century Dragon in 1:43 scale
The following day I was off to Poole. It was a delayed visit, the first attempt being frustrated by damaging my van and having to have it recovered after running over tyre debris on the Prince of Wales Bridge.
After once again making a very early start in the warehouse to get the invoices done I went south on the A34 and pulled up next to this lovely bike when I stopped for diesel.
It is a Triumph Bonneville T120 750 in Torch Red. The bike was a J plate making it 1971, it did not look restored, and was in lovely condition. Once upon a time I owned a T100, the 500cc Triumph twin. It was a great bike when it ran, it just broke down all the time.
The model is in 1:10 scale by Franklin Mint.
Following the M3 south towards Southampton I saw a wartime Jeep in military olive drab coming the other way. I hope the driver was well wrapped up, it was a cold morning. The model in the photo is by UT in 1:18 scale.
After the M27 westbound I got on to the A31 through the New Forest. This is a lovely piece of road with the New Forest Ponies grazing on the heathland.
My destination was Poole where I was collecting some slot cars. This is new-old stock from a closed down shop. So while the pieces were made some years ago they have never been owned by collectors.
We have not really majored on slot cars before, just selling the odd example that came our way in mixed collections. If these go well we will be buying more of them.
There is a mixture of road cars and racing cars, rally cars, a couple of trucks and some VW camper vans. They will start to appear on sale in the Little Wheels shop over the coming days & weeks.
As I left the M27 to join the M3 for my homeward trip I glimpsed a rare sight. The Maserati Biturbo.
It’s not a car you see that often, even when it was a current model in the 80s & 90s there were not many about. I only really know about it from the Bond movie Licence to Kill where the bad guy had one and fired rockets out of the boot. I think there was an old one on a Top Gear special in Cuba once, Hammond was very rude about it I seem to remember.
My next trip is to North Manchester, only a couple of streets away from where my wife spent her childhood. I am in search of Minichamps, mostly Formula 1 cars, but some bikes too.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s ramble, if you did please scroll to the bottom of the page and click the ‘Like’ button.
What’s in the Van? – Home
21st/22nd September – Stratford & Farnham
20th September – Duesenberg Coupe Simone
14th September – Croydon
10th September – New Romney
24th August – Shrewsbury
17th August – Airedale, Gainsborough & Leicester
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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