ISSUE 7 – MAY/JUNE 2015 – FREE
From festivals to fairtrade with La Jewellery Ludlow’s lost prince: Arthur Trying/failing at table tennis 3000-mile trek in £500 runarounds Home-grown stoves Playing a part in a budget ghost story Bennett’s End of a bygone era
“The original idea was to all go in XJ6s but nothing else came up in that £500 price range. And considering our first experience turned out to be haunted, we changed our mind” BaCK in 1994 I took part in the oneoff Borbet Challenge, along with mate my Nudge and then-girlfriend Sue. I clearly remember, after many months of route planning, raising of fuel sponsorship, kitting out the car with new tyres, engine, exhaust and suspension, our team filled up with fuel at Corve Street’s long-sincegone petrol station and embarked on a numbing/deafening 500-mile drive to Tomintoul (the highest village in the Scottish Highlands), in a 1982 Golf GTI equipped with rock-solid race-spec suspension and a straight-through exhaust system. It was from Tomintoul, the following morning, that we tumbled back down through the country, this time against the clock, in a bid to beat the world record for visiting all of the (then) 62 counties of mainland Britain in either the fastest time or by the shortest route. The team (all three of us in our early twenties) naturally went with the former goal and, subsequently, barrelled around the entirety of Britain accruing 1742 miles in thirtyone and half hours. It was quite a prominent road rally so there were
many others chasing the same goal, including Team Audi, who, in the end, beat us by 15 minutes... leaving us without the £1,000 for our chosen charity (Midlands Air Ambulance), the set of Continental tyres and Borbet wheels for each of the team members, and the Pentax camera apiece, all courtesy of the events’ title sponsors. In fact we managed third, which was not at all bad going really: a testament to our rigorous planning, the set-up of our chosen vehicle, and the simple fact that our car wasn’t possessed... ...unlike one of the cars being campaigned, some 21 years on, by a three-car team from Ludlow – as they attempt to put some miles under their tyres this 18th May (3,000 miles, in fact, during the famous Scumrun five-day charity rally across Europe) – which this year is set to help raise over £100,000 for JDRF: the type 1 diabetes charity. The car in question is a Jaguar XJ6 and, as per the Scumrun rules, had to be purchased for £500 or less – which was achieved to the penny by one of the team members, Jason Stanley, who some of you will know
from Wicked Van Hire, down on Weeping Cross Lane. “It was bought from a dealer in Manchester who was selling it for a friend,” says Jason. “His sales pitch was: it’s had two owners both called Geoff/Jeff. The first Geoff died. His wife sold it to his mate, also called Jeff, who died not long after. When we got back to Craven Arms, where Chris (who drove the Jag down) lives, I said I’d take it home, give it a bit of blast and see what it’s like. And he said: “Just be careful on your way home, mate, because there’ll be a couple of Geoffs in the car with you.” And I kind of get spooked with things like that. So, I was going down the road and, all of a sudden, the side window just opened up – I’m not kidding you, the hairs on the back of my neck went up. I tried to close the window, but it wouldn’t go up; I slowed it right down and managed to get the window back up and drove home really slowly. When I just got over the Onny Bridge it happened again. Eventually I got it back up again and took it to show Graham in Ludlow. He stepped out of the building
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and all the lights went out in the car park – it might have been on a timer, of course, that’s fair enough (these things happen), but how it was timed got to me. Graham said “that’s alright, we’ll jump in it and go around to my old office because the lights are on there.” So we went around to his old office, got out of the car and were having a look around it; I started telling him the story about the two Geoffs and he said: “Maybe we should call the car Geoff”... and, just as he said “Geoff” the sidelight and back light glowed on really slowly and went off really slowly. I took it down to the office the next day to speak to my wife about it (because she’s into that kind of thing). I parked it up, locked it, went inside and said to my wife: “Come on, we’ll go out for a run in the Jag.” She went to get into the passenger door and it was open... not open unlocked but actually open – the car opened the door for her. So now I’m scared and I’m going in the PT Cruiser.”
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