Newport Edition

GTI International 2007 - The washout

Torrential rains and blistering heat waves failed to dampen the spirits of the Ported…

It all started on Thursday night for myself and Nick, when we thought it would be a good idea to go out for a swift pre Inters drink. Somehow we failed to realise we had to pick up Ewan in Brizzle at 07:30 for our trek to Bruntingthorpe. We needed to get there early as we had volunteered to help set out the club display areas. After a few Red Bulls the trip was a good one. we managed to get there in around 2 and a bit hours which was good timing seeing as Zane and Nic under Velly’s guidance took about 5 hours?! Gotta love the 1400cc and under crew.

When we arrived we were clearly directed which way to go, but we decided on a different route in which involved going down the runway at 100mph+ questioning “whats that in the runway?”. It was at that point we started aquaplaning all over the place through a rogue stream across the runway. That’s not the worst bit either! The straight we had just blasted up was part of a test track, which happened to be live and we were going up it the wrong way, oops.. God was with us that day!

After a bit of mincing around it was off to set up camp 4 miles down the road. This was not so pleasant (apart from the farmer’s daughter, who was) as it was more of a bog than a field, with cars getting stuck all weekend (kept the farmers tractor busy though and kept the jet wash in business). We then popped off to Tesco for a bit of beer shopping and who should we bump into? Monkey, Clarkee and George (Zippy and Bungle inc). It would also seem we had parked next to George in the car park and not noticed.

The following day myself and Nick were up early to set up the show and shine area. I went off for a shower which was a waste of time as I had to walk back across the field (swamp) and seemed to be dirtier than before. I was apparently heard by Velly shouting “Look at the F@*king state of me now, the showers are sh@t, someone has shit in the one, the second don’t work and the 3rd one is jeffing freezing”.

The weather on the Saturday was a bit dodgy when we arrived, but as there was no one else there we washed the motors anyway and then went off to get a bacon sandwich and a cuppa. This was a laugh in its self as the monkey serving us had to be shown how to make a cup of tea. “Put the tea cup in the bag.. It’s my first day sorry” is what he said, NEVER.
After getting an initial soaking, Ryan, Gareth and Sian turned up, who seemed less than amused by the weather and even less amused when I told them about the camp site.

A few of us ran the quarter mile and I stupidly opted to do my run in the torrential rain and could not stop the car spinning up.
We still had a top day though and the quality of cars was good, even if traders were a little low on the ground. The pix do the talking for the cars. It was then back to planet bog for the Saturday night where the usual NE drinks fest got underway. All was quite quiet until some scottish lad started ranting his MK3 round the field, dounuts; handbrake turns etc were great on the wet field, although the farmer did not seem to think so. Like a bat out of hell this huge green John Deer (Good Tractor Knowledge) came blasting over the hill and looked like it was gonna smash his Golf head on, instead farmer john just stopped inches from his bumper, jumped out, walked over and proceeded to give the guy a pasting through the window. Good evening entertainment.

It was another early start on the Sunday and the trek back to the show. First things first today was the toilet, where myself and Nick managed to block the Bruntingthorpe toilet system up, oops. Some bloke with rubber gloves sorted that out though. Then they brought out the W12. As we had official passes, we were kind of ‘Access all areas’, so a little request for the bloke to blip the throttle from Nick and then me just inviting myself to climb inside it was great. Apparently it cost VW 7 Million to develop.. “owww muuuchhhh”

The weather was a lot better on Sunday and the show a lot busier. Robin, Steve and John joined the gang for the day and we all generally chilled out before the drive home. The strip was also a lot busier too and I don’t know what engine was in the Scirocco, but it did a 2.44 0-60??!! WTF??

As I said, I will let the pics do the talking for a top show, the weather was a bit gash and the fact that I spent £30 on tickets to find out I had free entry was a p@$$er, Velly brightened it all up though in his orange suit.

Cheers to all that made the effort and I will let you do the rest of the talking in the blog.

As usual, far too many pix in the gallery >>

GazB