Haynes Motor Museum Visit - 2009

It all started quite innocent really, a little get together of Devon & Cornwall members at the Haynes Motor Museum before the chaos of show season. Then the messages started coming in "can we come?" so the meet was opened up to all XROC members, the next thing we know there are 30 odd cars coming down from all over the country and also Performance Ford magazine said they'd love to come

an do a little feature!!!!!

After a few nervous days with work and keeping fingers crossed that all the cars coming would be okay I left my house to get down to Loz's. It was Saturday morning and we were ready for a rather frenzied and cold cleaning spree on both cars so they looked their best for the meeting.

Sunday morning we were up early to check the cars over, we headed out sharpish to get to Haynes for about 10.00am.

After a little swearing at the road conditions (rain and salt, as well as a lack of road signs) we arrived at the museum to be greeted by a car park full of XR's.

It was a great turn out and it was fantastic to see so many friends there. Unfortunately there were a couple of breakdowns but thank you to Gaf & Tracy for coming down still, despite the 24v XR4i killing its engine and the XR3i cab refusing to start (At least you still had The V*****ll). 

 

While I was cleaning "The Mistress" (as she's now been christened) people kept giving me birthday cards an presents which was a nice surprise but I was I little curious as to how people knew that it was my Birthday (more of this later). After a rather frantic spruce up of the cars they were ready for Chris (from Performance Ford) who arrived a little after the rest of us and after the introductions he proceeded to get snapping at the great line up of standard and modified cars that we had managed to assemble.

It is here I would like to say that Loz and I were blown away by the number we had.

At around 12.00pm we headed into the museum for a good look around, we were impressed at the amount of exhibits including some very rare and very strange models.

It took us a good couple of hours to look round and take it all in, after this we all filtered into the cafe for a well deserved sit down and a cuppa in the little restaurant.

This is when Loz's surprise was sprung, a birthday cake for me (complete with an icing model of my XR4x4) which arrived accompanied by everyone singing happy birthday with a few extra words (cheers Graham). I had no idea she had organised this,  the sneaky sod! But it was a great surprise and thank you to everyone for going along with it.

The day was drawing to a close fast, we all headed back outside for more pictures of the cars and the usual group shot with the branch banner for the magazine.

A few of us started to filter off as people left to make their way home after what I hope was a good day out (with the added bonus of some publicity for the club)

Sorry if Loz and I didn't get round to speaking to you but on behalf of both of us I would like to thank everyone who came along and made it a great day for the branch and the club as a whole.

Thank you to Jaffa & Brian for the use of your photos

Report by Jaffa