Having heard a lot about this from fellow Falcons, Martin Cheshire, Arnold Lane, Geoff Hodge the time came to have a go, now I have a suitable car in my Dellow Mk1 LOC 827.

Its not a competitive event, more a run, giving you an opportunity to drive a motor sport venue like Prescott or MIRA, finishing with a couple of laps of the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit. There are also controls in transport related museums and stately homes.

There are lots of start points, from Chester in the north to Dorking in the south. The routes all had a distance of 150/180 miles. However, this year there was also a shorter 80 mile route, starting and finishing at Silverstone itself and this seemed more suitable for LOC 827, especially as Silverstone is only 25 miles from Chaos Manor. We were going to be joined by Mike Hayward, who targeted the event to finish restoring his Sierra XR4i and give it a run out.

The MSA Classic was to be LOC 827’s first run with its rebuilt engine which was only fired up a week before, when all sorts of issues were discovered, including an untraceable oil leak and water leaking from the radiator and water pump.

Come the day the fluid leaks had been reduced, but not eliminated, and we set off having done about 20 miles on the engine which still contained running in oil. It was running much hotter than the old one. Whether this was because of the new temperature gauge, the stiffness of the new engine or the radiator that we now knew to be about 50% efficient I don’t know!

We had a nice run over to Silverstone, stopping on the way when we discovered the electric fan wasn't working. Some fiddling got it away, but it kept playing up all day. Meeting up with Mike and May Hayward in Mikes restored XR4i we had a nice and reasonably priced breakfast before setting off.

Michael and Chris in the Dellow on the Silverstone Grid

We were sent away for a lap of the GP circuit, after being flagged away from the starting grid itself. It was nothing like the circuit last time I drove around it in the late 60’s. Where has the Hanger Straight gone?

Exiting the circuit we had a nice run past Stowe, along the broad tree lined avenue, that I remember as the way we used to go to Silverstone back in the 60’s. Then through Anyo to a control at Broughton Castle. Mike had caught up with us on the way although we became separated when we both missed a turning and chose different ways to regain the route. The route card was in the form of tulips, bound into a very nice book. However, there were issues, such as crossroads sometimes being shown as crossroads and sometimes as turns, which is what went wrong in this case.

We had about half an hour at Broughton Castle. Time for a quick look round the grounds and the cars parked at the control. We hadn’t seen some of these at Silverstone as they were from other routes using this venue as a control.

The Compton Verney Control

Back on the road for the next control at Compton Verney Art Gallery where they were having a 40’s day. Pre war cars were invited right up to the house to join in proceedings for a while. We parked some way away to view proceedings from across the lake. This was an absolutely fantastic view. So beautiful it almost took your breath away.

The final control was at The Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon where we took time for lunch in their cafe and had a quick look round. Unfortunately the exhibits hadn't changed since we were there with our Ford Model Y for the Old Ford Rally. It was about 40 miles back to Silverstone and we came across a lot more participating cars on the route as more and more of the routes funnelled together. The pace slowed rather as we approached Silverstone as we came across the oldest car taking part, the 1902 Curved Dash Oldsmobile.

Can we get past that Pop!

Arriving back at Silverstone we drove our two laps of the Grand prix Circuit, taking care to stay out of the way of some of the faster cars. The speed differential was rather alarming! We were parked up around 4pm, spending a couple of hours looking at the other cars and socialising before the run home. All in all a nice day, helped by the nice weather. We saw quite a few people we knew which was nice. The car got round OK. Didn’t find to many new issues and although water was leaking from the radiator and the water pump we only topped up with a pint and a half so we should be OK for The Edinburgh Trial. Fingers crossed!

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