Yards And Yarns

[Dave Silcock]

This seems to be the most popular thread on here so here is my yarn about road trips in ths good old days, or as Lee Child would say ''back in the day'' In the early 60's I used to do a lot of travelling to Dunedin to visit my friends Brian Middlemass, Murray Fraser and Trevor Timms and Johh Chivers. These trips started out in my 6AN Ansaldo, then a 1947 2.5 liter Jaguar saloon and sometimes in company with Chivers in his SS90. Much was made of how long the trip took and soon rules were set down, time from Ch Ch was from the power board clock at Hornby, and arrival at Dunedin was the railway station. Time could be deducted whilst stationary for what ever reason. The Ansaldo, which was unbelivably gutless by modern standards, was regular as clockwork at 4 hours 10 minutes.By the time I had bought my first XK 120, this competion was quite the thing, naturally as a red blooded young man this was a challenge not to be ignored. The girl who was to become my first wife and I left Hornby at 6AM, and by the simple expedient of winding up to 100 MPH in 3RD and then running at full throttle to what ever speed it reached be fore some natural event caused me to lift off,got to Ashburton [50 miles] in 30 mins, Timaru half an hour later ,[100 miles] and Oamaru in similar time [150miles] The only car we passed was a beetle back Vangaurd with fishing rods on t roof. Alas we had used up the whole 14 gallons of feul the 120 carried, so had to wait till a service station opened. Now you can see the wisdom of the time out stationary rule, we finally got some more petrol and headed south. On cresting a rise at well over the ton, we came across a farmer shifting a mob of sheep over the other side, whoops, bugger the ewes, I'll drive through them at whatever speed I manage to get down too, whoops cocky has his kids as dogs hounding the ewes along, thinks I'll go down the left hand side of cockies series E Morris 8, problem clipped said E in left rear guard which sent us through a fence,down a bank, which was almost vertical, into a paddock, the only exit from which was a couple of railway tracks with a few more sleepers to stop one from getting stuck across a creek. We got out to the road, cooky says 'if your still here when I come back I'll get you out' I had to remove the brake drums to get the stones out, let down the Firestone Gum Dipped tyres because of the flats on them, do you know I had a 120 in my shop last month with the exact same tyres on it. The boys were waiting at the service station at the end of the so called Dunedin motorway, and very concerned they were. Got dirt in one of my eyes had to go Dunedin Hospital to get it removed, the doctor was a German lady that informed me, ''that when you drive zee open sports car you vill wear zee goggles!!