Scirocco Register National Meet.RAF Cosford 10th August 2013. See you there :-)

Hi Folks.

Well, after an eventful few weeks in which Scarlett has had to be fitted with a new radiator,battery and clutch cable (which was due to breakage and an eventful 21 mile drive home minus clutch facility!), we are now on the verge of attending the umpeenth Scirocco register meet at RAF Cosford (yaaaaaay!!)

Did not attend last year due to numerous obstacles and events, the worst of which was the passing of my lovely mum Jill after her valiant and inspirational 7 year fight against Ataxia (Dementia).Love ya mum :-)

This year, against a backdrop of numerous other setbacks and obstacles it looks like we may just make it to the gathering :-)

Tomorrow sees the car being valeted by Matt who has done me a very good deal for both car and trailer (saves my back and head...which i am always banging whilst hoovering the interior!).

Hopefully, (notice how positive my attitude is!) i will begin the drive down to the White pump farm campsite sometime after 2pm to meet up with many old, and some new friends.

I will post a report ...sorry, that sounds far to grand!...a roundup of the proceedings and post a few pictures to boot.

By the way. HAPPY BIRTHDAY RACHEL! to my eldest daughter who will turn 19 whilst i am away at the meet on Saturday.

Watch this space :-)

UPDATE:

Had a short but enjoyable National show and met many of my old Scirocco mad mates again...and a few new ones to boot :-)

Took the opportunity to do a little fund raising for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research on the day (it would be rude not to...especially when your car has their name on it!) and managed to collect a very respectable total of £132.75...brilliant !!

Thanks to all my fellow owners who made contributions, and a special thanks to my best friend from Holland Sander who bought the framed limited edition print of my Scirocco, signed by Sir Ian Botham, for a very generous £50! Top bloke :-)


Andy

Scirocco Register National Meet 30th July 2011

.

A very nice video made by my good friend and co-driver Glen Place....

Great weekend people. Same again in 2012? :-)

.

Scirocco Register another great success, and a nice surprise for me!

.

Yet another great owners club meeting at RAF Cosford was enjoyed by a record number of Scirocco lovers this weekend and a fantastic time was had by all.

The good news for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research was that after a quickly organised raffle to win a laptop was arranged the generous folk of the Scirocco Register donated a grand total of £115 (including straight donations). Fantastic :-)

Acording to my good friend Glen Place the total number of Scirocco's attending the event went up from 53.5 last year to 55.5 in 2011 (The .5 is of course Scarlett's Trailer!).

In conclusion then it was a weekend of Brilliant weather, brilliant cars, an excellent (if slightly basic!) campsite,fantastic venue and wonderful friendly Scirocco friends.........Amazing :-)

.

Stanford Hall or was it "Bug Freeze" ?

Fancy a Caravan to match your Camper?

On Duty!

Stanford Hall with sprinkling of Campers!

OK, so I don't have a "bug", but I was so cold that the freeze part was absolutely true!. In traditional English Bank holiday style the proceeding 48 hours had been "not bad", but come Sunday the rain clouds had gathered and the temperature had dropped to between 4-7 degrees...not ideal conditions for a day sitting out in a field in Worcestershire!. Anyway, as you probably guessed we made it across (down?) to Stanford Park at 08:35. having left Sleaford at approx 07:00 am that morning.The drive down was pretty uneventful, although I was a little concerned about the rate the car was consuming fuel!. I had put £15 of standard unleaded in the previous evening and by the time we got to the venue I was down to a needle width of a fuel guage of being empty!.Of course towing the rear section of a Scirocco loaded with all manner of "spares" (2 alloys,spring sets,dampers,tool box, tents etc) I guess that the economy was probably around the 34-35 Mpg mark during a lot of the trip.

After arriving at the gate (which we missed on the first attempt!) we were ushered over to pitch 178 (and 179 as no one turned up to take it!) and after a quick coffee and a cold bacon sandwich, we set up shop.This comprised of 2 collection jars,2 tubs of "gizzits" (key rings,trolley coins etc) a couple of LLR brochures and a large LLR tablecloth type thing which we spread on the floor just in front of the car.

After a while myself and mini me headed off to find the loo's as both of us need to go quite urgently.We located the bogs without much fuss only to be confronted by a locked door....oh bliss!. After a delay of perhaps 10 Min's someone came to unlock the doors and we managed not to wet ourselves!.



This is the first time that I have attended Stanford as a participant, and indeed it is the first time I have attended the show since 1990. The location is a very English Manor house set in beautiful parkland, and has a couple of lakes on the site which looked very nice, but made me very vigilant every time Andy jr got near them as they are not fenced off at all.



The size of this show was quite amazing, and the range of VW vehicles on display was fantastic. If you needed spares there were literally dozens of vendors selling anything from a replacement bulb through to complete camper van chassis!. I particularly liked the stall which was selling camper van "caravans".The basic concept was that Matt (the owner of the company) had taken 2 written off camper rear ends, turned then in on each other to form a double rear ended body, then made a glass fibre moulding of the resulting frame and fixed it to an "A" frame.It looked terrific as a finished article, and I was told that prices started from as little as £5500....if you have a spare £5500...I don't sadly! :-(.



We saw rows upon rows of pristine vehicles lined up in the concourse area, these ranged from split screen beetles and campers through to much more up to date water cooled Volkswagen types, all seemed to be getting a lot of TLC from their proud owners as they prepared for the judging of their pride and joys some time later in the day.



Food was passable but not entirely satisfying, the hot dog that I bought for mini me bore no resemblance at all to the glossy picture on the side of the food vendors van...in fact the sausage that was supposed to nestle within the finger roll appeared to have shrunk at some point and was now almost lost within its bread cocoon...Andy asked me to "eat the boring bits" so he could get at the sausage inside!. We did not have another one of those!.

As is usual at these sort of events we met up with several chaps (not chavs!) from the Scirocco Register who had pitched up on the club stands area, and a couple more were parked in the concours area busily polishing their cars in preparation for the judges arrival.We met up with the people whoi are organising an event named Van Jamboree at Newark showground on the 21-23 May, and they gave us a few flyers to put up around the hospital .

The day went quite well, we managed to collect a few quid for LLR, had a good look around the show, and set off to head home at around 3:30 PM.

A great day out only slightly dulled by the rather cool weather, but hey, this is the UK and what else would we expect on a abank holiday ?

Cheers.Andy

.

Got a Scirocco? Then make sure you make a date for the UK National Meet in July 2010!

Yes folks, this year the Scirocco Register meet will be held in the (hopefully!) warmer month of July and the venue will once again be the air museum at RAF Cosford.

Anyone is welcome and the normal arrangements are that camping/hotels (for the softies!) will be available on the Friday and Saturday nights for those who fancy the chance to relax and unwind with others who will probably chew your ear off with constant banter about a certain type of car!. Seriously though, the last 2 events have been great, and if,like me,you have a family, then they to are more than welcome to attend.

It's not all about cars though, and once you have paid your £3.00 for parking you can go around the museum and have a good look at their amazing collection of exhibits for free !.

If you are a James May (Top Gear) fan you will probably already know that the life size plasic model Spitfire he made on on of his shows also lives at RAF Cosford....got to be worth a look at that !

There is also food available on site and a gift shop should you fancy splashing a few quid out on some gift.

The date has been set as the 24th July 2010 and you can see more details by clicking on this link HERE.
.

Camping,Scirocco's and bog floors!...what a weekend that was :-)

Details of this post will be posted once i have finished lunch...and work, for the day ...stay tuned :-)

Ok...i'm now back (just a few days between the first entry on this post and now!).Sooo....camping.

Well, this refers to the little "jolly jape" that Rachel,Andy Jr (mini me) and myself had the other weekend (15th August).This was the day of the 2nd National Volkswagen Scirocco Register's Annual Meeting at RAF Cosford in Staffordshire.

Myself and the 2 kids mad enough to go along with my mad idea (as named earlier....good choice Lauren!) set off at approx 6:30 pm on the Friday night and set sail..sorry, made tracks....towards a campsite named "The White Pump Farm" which is situated approx 7 miles away from Cosford.We Arrived at around 9:20 PM after making a few detours .Newark upon Trent (to pick up some stickers and a flag....cheers Biff!) and the Maplins store at Mansfield (to purchase a new Inverter...my last one blew up when I attempted to run a stupidly large amount of fairy lights during the towing of Santa's sleigh around Mansfield Woodhouse last year!).

After these stops (and another just over the road from Maplins at Burger King), we made the rather uneventful trip into Staffordhire, the only real upset for me was taking a wrong turn and ending up on the M6 Toll Road.......£8.40 for 12 miles...what a load of boll**s that was...robbing gits!.

Obviously when we arrived at the site, everyone else was already set up, and drinking beer in a large gazebo (is that how you spell it?),so without further adoo we got to work (i say "we", i mean "i"!) pitching the tents, which is great fun in the dark and lead to a few balls ups as i got my poles well and truly mixed up!.

Anyway, after a little help from the guys (Paul and Glen) the camp was established and the eating of a ceremonial plate of Spam and beans took place, courtesy of my mate Glen who had decided to remind me of the wonderful fare we had consumed during our little Scirocco 2 Morocco trip last year....oh how the memories came flooding back...a culinary time machine it was indeed.....and a bit cold by the time i got to eat it !.

After a few obligatory games of "pitch black football" with Andy Jr, we joined the gang and settled down to watch Glen's latest edit of his S2M video diary.Sadly I had offered to bring my laptop to run it on, and due to a lack of memory (the laptop, not me!), and an awful lot of what i am told is called in IT circles as "a load of crap on yer desktop" the laptop refused all efforts to get it to play the epic video, and so, after much heckling by the assembled crowd, we gave in and resumed another game of "pitch black football" and drank copious amounts of Carlsberg before retiring to the comfort (?) of my pop up tent.

Saturday morning saw us all up with the lark (he was late up too!), and after a coffee and more football (this time we could see it!), myself and Glen set off in advance of the main crowd to set up the venue in preparation for their arrival later in the morning.

Having booked in to RAF Cosford, and been advised by a fella in a bright yellow vest that we needed to buy a £3 parking ticket (not mentioned in advance..free last year!) we got Glens spanking new "pop up" gazeebo out and with very little effort we had it up and to this we then attached the new Scirocco Register National Meet flag.....lovely!.

The rest of the gang arrived at about 11am, and was parked in a very arty fashion by Mr Place who had decided that the method of parking last year had been something short of "photogenic", so he choreographed the position of each Roc as it arrived, and the result was a lot more arty than last years effort...well done Glen :-).

We had noted when we arrived at Cosford earlier that the wind was getting a little blustery, and had resolved to attach guy lines to the Gazebo if it picked up any more. Sadly the first thing to be "picked up" was Glens gazebo, and after tumbling several yards down the line of cars it came to rest "legless" (like a few folk the night before!) in a crumpled heap...and the flag pole attached to it was twisted and snapped also....bugger !

After putting away the remains of the gazebo, tie wrapping the flag pole and trying to see the funny side, we carried on with the meet,had some breakfast,took in a tour of the fantastic museum and a trip in its flight simulator and then at around 3.30pm we set off back to the campsite via the local SPAR shop.

Paul (from Northern Ireland) suggested that perhaps pizza seemed a good idea instead of the planned BBQ, and after a trip to Dominoe's Pizza in a place (can't remember it's name...sorry!), we returned to the site for a great evening of food,beer and car repairs......yes, car repairs!.Well come on now, no "proper" gathering of enthusiasts with old cars would be complete without the mandatory "urgent fix", and this came along in the form of a broken exhaust pipe which was eventually rectified by (amongst others!) our resident mechanic and all round nice bloke "Sander" from Holland.....nice work matey :-)

The night concluded with "pitch black swingball" which is only slightly more dangerous than football, and a game of "catch the flashing light up ball before it goes out and smacks you on the nose" ...ball. Andrew Jr mastered the art of opening both bottled and canned beer for peoples amusement, and at around 1am after he had finally run out of steam we headed off to our tents and a bloody good nights rest.

I woke at approx 7;30am, and after a trip to the porta loo (or the "Turdis" as it became known) I began the task of packing the odds and sods that we had brought with us.

We left at 9.30 after saying our farewells to the gang, and departed for the 2 and a half hour trip back to sunny Lincolnshire.

Roll on next year :-)

.