2015 WELSH ROAD TRIP – A
Personal Reflection from the ’Newbies’
Frank and Sandra Allen’s Welsh Road Trip was to be our first
event with the 289 Register, and with only 180 miles on the clock and an awful
weather forecast for the drive down on Friday, we approached it with some
trepidation. The Ace was loaded with a small suitcase full of tools, spare oil
and water, hood and sidescreens erected, and we set off into the rain at about
3pm, fingers crossed that the untried windscreen wipers would keep working.
We’d brought a couple of old towels to anticipate the
occasional leak – though the weather penetrated on a similar scale to my first
car – a 1962 Midget, and Penny and I soon realised that rolled-up jeans were de rigeur. Much water came in from
behind due to the shape of the rear body, some more from around the top centre
of the windscreen and probably other areas as well. Traffic was quite heavy – a
long queue near Tarporley on the A49 in particular. We had a brief stop at
Whitchurch before trundling along to Oswestry and Welshpool. We almost found
Maesmawr Hall first time, and on parking up with a line of Cobras we were
warmly greeted by a number of our fellow members. Somehow we’d managed to take
nearly three hours to travel 90 miles ….