The day began with a very early start to rendezvous with my local area Seven crew 'ReHaB' (ReadingHantsAndBerks') at Farnham Station, Sunrise Sevens old RVP !. Unfortunately my usual timekeeping meant 12 miles was not going to go into 9 minutes !, so I decided to divert direct to one of the three main rendezvous points for the blat start-point , Caterham Cars in........Caterham of all places !
I ran into another Seven a few miles out from Caterham, who knew the area, and I kept pace with Ric all the way up to Graham Nearns old dealership, where we parked , along with about 130 other Sevens, on the top of the local Morissons car park
Refreshed by a hearty bacon roll and as much coffee as we could drink, we headed off to leave on a mass-blat to Stow-Maries Aerodrome, which is the only World War 1 airfield still standing and is being restored to its former glory , complete with hangars full of WW I aircraft by Russell Savory , who also uses it as his base for building specialist cars like the innocative bike-based V8 Levante, a stretched , turbo'd Exige, and a new 'budget' (think £60K) again bike-based, but a V6 that fits into a standard narrow-body Series 3 seven - over 600 BHP, and 'limited' to 155MPH ....in an aeroscreened Seven !! - you need to have a screw-loose to strap this thing on !
The only problem with following a load of Sevens in a convoy is that if you follow the Seven that is lost, you end up lost too...so after 2 roundabouts , I lost touch with the main convoy...which would have sounded fantastic in the Dartford tunnel. However, all was not lost as I got back on course. I was alone on some really good twisting B-roads, as I passed a lovely E-type reversing out of his drive - soon he was on my tail. Whenever I turned , he seemed to follow, obviously also out for a blat ! - As I passed a pub , he turned in with a friendly wave, as I headed towards Stow Maries once more !
The finale of the whole day was about 250 Sevens parked in a '7' formation and photographed from an Auster flying overhead.
Now to the real reason behind this, hopefully annual event., was to celebrate Graham Nearn , who founded Caterham Cars, one of the original Lotus Seven dealers, and the guy who persuaded Colin Chapman to give him the rights to produce what became the cars we drive today.
So really ....he's the reason we can still blast up and down our B-roads at 6.15 in the morning.
so, Cheers Graham !
