| Club Natter | MG Ireland 98 |
Recently a small group of Cambridge & District MGOC members and their partners visited Ireland. (two cars MGBGT & MGF)
The trip was organised in conjuction with the MGOC Travel Club, it would appear that they all had a great time, below is a report along with a few photographs. During the month of May we have enjoyed two Bank Holidays, both bringing reasonable weather for us to enjoy our MG's.
Besides the trip to Ireland, several club members have visited Holland, we hope to bring details of that soon. The Cambridge MGOC has recieved several invitations to attend various shows around the county of Cambridgeshire this summer, sadly we are unable to attend them all, but try our best to fit them into our busy Events Diary
Stop Press:On Monday 1st June, the club met for the first time at the Lion & Lamb public house at Milton. We were made very welcome, its quite roomy and plenty of space in the car park for all our MG's. The bar that has been made available to us is 'non smoking'
which make for quite a pleasant enviroment. Several other car clubs also use the Lion & Lamb, and its not hard to see why, at 9.30 a large tray of sandwidges was brought out for us, delicious!! Our thanks to the landlord. The club also attacted two new recruits, one of whom is looking to purchase a roadster and has about 4k to spend, have you got one for sale? We shall be returning to the Lion & Lamb on July 6th for our concours night which was cancelled back in April.
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By 7:45pm, on Thursday 30th April, more than 20 MG's from a mid 60's Midget to a Mid 90's MGF had been waved through to the car park at Swansea ferry terminal, by a bemused attendant, ready to board the ferry together.
Everyone drove straight through customs - everyone except us that is!! - ( Dorothy & Jon) maybe because we were the youngest. You can't really hide much in BGT but the officials still unpacked the boot for us!
Once on board we all drifted, - shopping, eating, drinking &
finally sleeping until being awakened by a very loud tannoy at 6am
announcing our imminent arrival in Ireland (Cork), causing various people
to rush out on deck and capture it on film.
Still sleepy, we drove from the ferry terminal to Kinsale for
breakfast - "just follow the signs" we were told. Those drivers with sleepy
navigators inevitably ended up missing the turning and did the rest of us a
favour by waving us in the right direction.
An excellent breakfast over, we all went our separate ways until
late afternoon when the holiday cottages would be available at Trabolgan -
our home for the next few days.
We chose to explore Kinsale, a very pretty town with painted
shopfronts, but very touristy indeed. Later we ventured into Cork, 2nd
largest city in Ireland, whose busy shopping streets reminded me of
Manchester. By early evening we were all at Trabolgan and MG's could be seen
everywhere. We had been joined by those who had chosen shorter ferry
crossings to Dublin & Rosslare, and our numbers more than doubled.
Saturday dawned bright, and many felt the need to remove the grime
collected on Friday's journey. They washed and waxed their cars early in
the morning, ready for the new coat of dirt. Some MG's admittedly needed a
wash, having been parked under trees full of Crows! We chose to have an
extra hour's sleep, so ours wasn't the shiniest car on the road run. This
took us down many country lanes and through tiny villages where the
appearance of so many MG's won cheers and waves from the locals.
The MGF's - not so obviously a part of our run of "old cars" as people saw it missed
out on some of these greetings!
The bumpy roads apparently took their toll on a couple of MG's -
the jolts causing bits to fall off, but we were fine. The road run was well
organised with clear directions, but some navigators appeared to be asleep
once again as you needed your wits about you, Irish road signs being
intermittent or just plain wrong at times.
Saturday evening was time to dress up as we went to Blackrock
Castle in Cork for a meal, and we were entertained by an Irish harpist and
later an Irish duo with two young Irish dancers. This event was all the
better as there was no need to drive, coaches being laid on for the
journey.
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Sunday saw a visit to the Jameson Whiskey Heritage Centre, up the road from us in Middleton. We were joined for this by many Irish MG's, and visitors to the centre that morning were treated to a free MG show, as around 60 MG's took up the rear car park.
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On Friday morning, bright and early, 21 MG's set off to catch the
ferry from Cork. Everyone was on time, but the ferry was held up for an
hour. A car was towed off, and the ferry searched by the police for the
owner. The rumour was that he'd jumped over board. We don't know what
really happened as the official announcement stated, "an incident which
involved the ferry in being searched." We spent our wait discussing what
had failed or fallen off each others cars over the week on the Irish roads.
We foolishly said our car had been fine, and then it promptly refused to
start when we wanted to get off the ferry! Luckily it did eventually start,
to our relief. (probably a case of sea sickness.)
We arrived back in Swansea at 8pm, and all drove home, passing each
other for some time down the M4 as just about everyone lived east of
Swansea, and in our case it was a 5 hour drive back to Cambridgeshire
Thanks to everyone involved in arranging such an excellent trip at
a very reasonable cost.
A great time was had by one and all.
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