Inspired by "going to Bournemouth just to get some sweets" in another thread, what's your most ridiculous journey? The one that you drove "just because", and your great grandchildren will disown you because you wasted precious fuel on it, but you look back on with a mental grin and go "aww...".
Mine must be the summer's day 35 years ago a mate and I decided to drive from Bedford to Plymouth to play a particular fruit machine. We did. We lost about £10 on it (probably enough in those days to refuel the car from empty). And then we drove home again, all in my Morris Minor, and with Status Quo playing on my tape deck on the back seat. Not the band, just a recording.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Tue 28 Apr 15 at 14:04
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We were night people in the early sixties, and there was hardly anything open in London after 11pm. When the Chelsea and Fulham places closed a frequent blast (when some sort of jalopy was available) was to Heathrow where you could get coffee all night. People today would find it hard to believe how quiet and traffic-free the whole country was late at night, London included.
A friend of mine who had been sent down from Oxford used to go there regularly from London to get his hair cut. He'd found a barber there who did it right.
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Among the ridiculously long journeys let me add a ridiculously short one.
October 1993 and Mrs Beest (to be) and I were at a wedding in a hotel in North Carolina, next to US Highway 1. The ceremony wasn't till late afternoon so we needed lunch. There were numerous food outlets on the other side - we could see them - but when we walked up to the kerb and wondered how to get across to them, we couldn't see ourselves getting there without getting squished.
So we retreated to our rented Mercury and drove it what can have been no more than 200 metres, bought our lunch and drove it back.
Incidentally, the hotel was a mock-Colonial place that looked 150 years old. But when I passed that way again last year, my driver - the bride on the previous occasion - pointed it out. Or rather, pointed to where it had been; it had been pulled down to make way for another shopping mall.
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Le Dorat, in the Limousin, to Chauvigny - not to visit the medieval city, but to feed the fish in the duckpond with leftover bread from lunchtime, mind (we'd been already but the kids enjoyed the fish more)...
...then on to Poitiers for dinner because the Quick there had an inside play area...
...and back to Le Dorat via Bussiere Poitivine, for a change of road.
A round trip of 160km and 3 1/2 hours drive just for sport of an afternoon - and isn't that what holidays are all about?
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Valentines day 1978 - London> Exeter (30 second stop to leave a surprise bunch of flowers on a gfs doorstep) Exeter to Hereford (to leave another surprise bunch of flowers on another gf's doorstep) Hereford to home.
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Manchester -> Blackpool -> Devon. Wasn't paying attention and ended up on M6 northbound. Days before sat nav, maps, or geography lessons.
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Hitched once and on a small piece of cardboard had written "N'Hampton".
Was delighted to be picked up, and it was a slow slow realization that the lorry driver had read it as "W'Hampton".
Never did tell him, hadn't the heart. Took a long time to get home though.
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When I lived at Tilton on the Hill in Leicestershire some 35 years ago I was asked where I'd like to go for Mothers Day lunch. Jokingly, I said the Copper Kettle at West Looe and sure enough the following day we did 644 mile round trip for lunch ....in a Vauxhall Cresta and it didn't break down either!
Pat
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Not in my car nor me driving but me and my mate decided to go down to Benllech for a couple of nights camping about ten years ago. At the time he drove an N reg Fiesta which he bought for £300 and was mostly made out of rust.
We had to keep stopping down on the way, in the back of the boot not only did we have all our tents but he had two 5 litres of 10w 40 in the back! We worked out the car consumed around 6 litres of oil during the 350 mile round trip!.
Not really motoring related as such but I am facing another ridiculous journey at the end of May, 1150 miles in a coach, 2300 mile round trip from Manchester! Not as bad as it sounds though.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Tue 28 Apr 15 at 16:07
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1150 miles in a coach, 2300 mile round trip from Manchester! Not
>> as bad as it sounds though.
Hmmm Every bit as bad if you ask me.
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>> Valentines day 1978 - London> Exeter (30 second stop to leave a surprise bunch of
>> flowers on a gfs doorstep) Exeter to Hereford (to leave another surprise bunch of flowers
>> on another gf's doorstep) Hereford to home.
>>
>>
...less adventurous than deflowering them, if you ask me. ;-)
I remember maybe 50 years ago having a 80 mile-ish round trip in a friend's Series 1 Landrover with 7 others just to get a late coffee at Forte's (the services) on the A1 North of Doncaster.
Rather echoes the post further up about the then lack of anything open after 5pm.
(which also brings back memories of Crewe - I spent a week there one day). ;-)
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Driving from Los Cristianos in Tenerife, all the way up to Mount Teide to eat a roast chicken, then driving back down again. We never actually meant to go up there, we only went out to buy the sodding pollo.
(*_*)
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Left my house in Foster City Ca. in my new Firebird to get some cigarettes. Decided to give the car a blast down 101 and just kept going. Turned before Los Angeles (hate the place) and thought I'd seek out 66.
Finished blasting in Dallas, stayed one night with my girlfriend and drove home again.
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I have had a few over the years.
Littledean (Glos) to Hounslow, literally non stop, in my 1600E with the clutch not working
Nottingham to Hounslow sitting in my 1600E on top of a flat bed truck after a main bearing snapped and a piston failed.
Several times, (Near Cape Town), Simon's Town via Stellenbosch to Franschhoek just to buy pancakes. A nice trip but 90K each way, the pretty way, and about two hours.
A had a meeting arranged at Coventry but the customer said I should try their new Paris Coventry service. So up early and off to Heathrow to get the first flight to Paris.
At Paris " no find my ticket" so missed the customers flight.
Got a ticket on next flight to Birmingham then a taxi to Coventry.
I had left home at silly o'clock and arrived at gone 1300.
A day trip to Johannesburg ? Overnight flight, washed and showered prior to my presentation and back to the same aircraft for another overnight flight back to Heathrow.
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St Albans to Hertford, endless loop, in about 1966 in a Triumph Mayflower.
I'd done the route once before, but got confused near the end and didn't realise I was on my way home again. But everything looked familiar, so I plodded on. At some point back nearer home i must have got myself back on the outward section again. The landmarks looked familiar, and it was only shortly after the point where I went wrong the first time that it dawned I had done this section before.
I've always remembered the vital lesson I learned - the wrong route always looks familiar a second time, and reinforces the fatal mistake of repeating the same error. It's a metaphor for life too.
Last edited by: Cliff Pope on Tue 28 Apr 15 at 17:43
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Once drove from work in Florence ( yes that one in Italy ) leaving late on a Friday afternoon to go to a Saturday night party in Liverpool ( yes that one next to the Mersey ) drove back to Italy after the do and was back at work in the Florence office on Monday morning. All of this in a Cortina and using the hovercraft to cross the Channel.
Not sure why really, it wasn't a great party.
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>> Not sure why really, it wasn't a great party.
you were lucky the wheel didn't get nicked off the car.
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Early 1960s, living in Nottingham - a trip to London in a Morris Minor (not mine) four or five up, just to have a coffee in the 2is.
Back the same night!
Knackered. :-)
Last edited by: Roger. on Tue 28 Apr 15 at 22:36
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Next - same era - a trip from Nottingham to Sussex, in an Austin A40 Farina, to un-silenced club racing spec., (Formua Junior engine, etc ., etc, - I helped to paint it, in blue, 'cos that's what we had and done with a brush!) to swap the car for a raced tuned Lotus 7. Driving back to Nottingham - me sitting on the fuel pump which occupied the passenger seat, at a high rate of knots, my eyelids streaming and upper body perishingly cold.
Oh, the driver - a mad and quite young, F. O Williams, later a flatmate of mine, now Sir Frank Williams!
Last edited by: Roger. on Tue 28 Apr 15 at 22:46
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Short but naughty.....Bored, sitting on the firm's Velocette LE at 4 am in the city centre. The other night patrol bike found me and suggested we went for a cup of tea somewhere. He knew just the place and we ended up at Knutsford services on the M6. About 20 miles away.
Fortunately we didn't get a shout...bear in mind that we were at the end of the ' Victorian ' policing era in 1966 and no-one else, except the night van had a radio. Contact with foot officers was by a pre-arranged points system which varied each shift. You had to be at a certain point..a phone box...at a certain time.
One memorable trip was a camping trip to Abersoch on a Lambretta ( or, as it was Wales, a Llambretta ) with me best mate on the back and all our camping gear.
The bike had no woodruff key in the rear ' axle ' so we carried a load sixpences and bent them in half with pliers every 30 miles or so. We got as far as a farm on the road between Caernarfon and Afonwen when we gave up the struggle and abandoned it in a farmyard, getting the bus onward.
We went back later in my stepdad's Bedford Utilabrake to collect it and bring it home .
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>> Short but naughty.....Bored, sitting on the firm's Velocette LE at 4 am in the city
>> centre. The other night patrol bike found me and suggested we went for a cup
>> of tea somewhere. He knew just the place and we ended up at Knutsford services
>> on the M6. About 20 miles away.
It must have been the same period, when the Met used the LE - 'noddy' bikes. I passed one on the A316, he managed to catch me up and pull me over. He was 'pretend' upset when he realised that we knew each other! He was a Welshman that I played rugby with. Nice bloke. I wonder what happened to him?
What was the maximum speed of those Velocette LEs? The early ones were 150 cc, weren't they?
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The Mk 3 was 192cc. I still have the bike I rode to Knutsford in my garage. Nothing wrong with it, just needs a battery, fuel and a plug clean. Top speed was around 50 but I once put super-unleaded in by mistake and thought it had turned into a Hyabusa !
I once saw seventy come up downhill into Holmfirth...praying no sheep were in a suicidal mood !....Awful brakes..5" drums.
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Hamilton to Kenilworth to arrive at 1100. Bought and loaded on my roof rack a new chassis for the Morgan 4/4. Then drove back to Hamilton arriving back at around 1900.
As you might expect I was a bit tired and ODed on coffee. First and only time I've had caffeine poisoning and that night I was bouncing off the walls.
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Nottingham to Skegness (for an afternoon on the beach, fish and chips for tea) to Liverpool (for a night on the tiles), back to Nottingham the next morning. Why we didn't just go to Southport or suchlike for the beach and chips first I can not remember. 1st year of University, celebrating end of exams. Car - red B-reg FIAT Regata 70 (1.3 4-spd)
Reading to St Etienne in a day to watch Scotland get thumped 3-0 by Morocco in the World Cup (1998), slept in car by the side of the road after the match and drove back at dawn. Car - white H-reg Peugeot 309 Look (1.3 again, 5-spd this time). They had to make special editions to shift white cars in those days.
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Nice to see you posting Alanovic.
Pat
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Nice to see you...
Ay-men to that, brother! Welcome back.
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Oh, and another one. Leningrad to Tallinn by taxi, in 1990, Soviet times still. Middle of winter, about -20 degrees C, gone midnight. Taxi got a puncture in the middle of a forest, changed the wheel, off we went, got another puncture. Taxi driver flags down a truck and goes off hunting for tyre repair services with a wheel. 5 of us left by the side of a 10 foot snow drift, hoping the car doesn't run out of petrol as we needed the heater pretty desperately. Wolves howling in the background. Car - standard issue Soviet yellow 1970s Volga. With plasticraft gearknob and picture of Linda Lusardi clipped to the windscreen. Maybe that was there in case the heater broke down.........
The taxi we took from Tbilisi to Yerevan was nearly as daft, but this was during daytime in the spring. Only real surprise was witnessing a sheep escape from the boot of a travelling Lada (beige) en route.
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Getting lost in the Doncaster Triangle...
At the end of a knackering week's holiday, heading south down the A1, I dropped into Doncaster to find a sandwich for lunch and buy something to cook for dinner when I got home.
Leaving Doncaster, I got onto the M18 northbound... Traffic seems quiet for the A1, that's nice. Hit the M62, saw signs for Manchester; don't want that, so headed the other way - towards Hull. Gosh it's flat. Look at map. Turn round to retrace steps. Miss M18 turn (I told you I was tired...) and sail back to pick up the A1 again where it crosses the M62.
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From Lagos to Calabar in Nigeria, about 350 miles as the crow flies but probably 450 by road when I did it in 1973. Crossing the Niger delta the road had 42 awkwardly angled bridges. The Biafra war was still a recent memory and beside the famous Uli airstrip - actually a straight bit of road - wrecked aircraft were returning rapidly to nature.
In a 6-cylinder Nissan Patrol jeep thing, canvas top, well past its first youth, every panel rattling over every bump, and there were one or two bumps on the way. Tremendous torque steer under acceleration and did about 12mpg.
I wanted to see what the countryside was like outside Yorubaland, and went with Fela Kuti's chief bodyguard and a barmy friend of his - the jeep owner - to see the bodyguard's granny. Fela advised me strongly not to go, but I think thought better of me for going... The granny received me kindly and made a special snail soup for me without pepper (I was far too polite to say I would have preferred it with pepper).
Interesting - very - what with the adventures on the way. It's all a bit of a blur now, but I've never been so knackered and filthy in my life. On the way back the barmy jeep owner's dad came past in a new huge black Mercedes and stopped to scold his son. He didn't offer me a lift though.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Wed 29 Apr 15 at 18:27
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Your most ridiculous journey - Armel Coussine
