London to Brighton 2007

To be honest I wasn't looking forward to doing the L2B, because every year something always goes wrong with my car and this time was no exception. With the weather looking pretty poor all week I thought it was going to be the same as last year, heavy rain and electrical problems. So to my surprise on Saturday afternoon when I woke up it was sunny. Throwing some stuff in the mini I set off to the services on the M23, to meet up with some L2B 'virgins' in a Bini Cooper S. We couldn't exactly say what we were thinking as we would have got a beating but plenty of people gave some abuse at Crystal Palace.

We set off for Crystal Palace after filling up with petrol, giving the cars a good loosen up up the M23. So far my car had been fine and hadn't leaked water everywhere. Once we hit Croydon I had the heater on full blast trying to keep the temperature down, it helped a bit but I still had to pull over. After a short stop, I followed the satnav to Crystal Palace, hoping the mini wouldn't overheat. I managed to lose the Bini after a few sets of traffic lights, there's just no way they could keep up.

Finally got to Crystal Palace, and just as the marshal checked my ticket it dumped all the water out of the radiator and the fan stopped working, so that's a job for this weekend (again). I parked up, the Bini eventually found me and parked up next to me, they bought everything but the kitchen sink. While I wandered off to cause trouble, they spent an hour putting up the tent, and all the other bits and bobs they had, and decided to tie a pink Xmas tree to the roof of my car. While everyone was messing about with bbq's and gas stoves I thought sod it I'll order a pizza, and got it delivered. Doc turned up, with the sound of screeching tyres as he tore round the car park scaring the crap out of his new girlfriend.
I didn't bother packing a tent because you never get any sleep if you camp, so I managed to kip for a few hours in the back of the mini, it wasn't too uncomfortable but I'm not doing that again. The chavy kids near me kept half the campsite awake with their loud noise, they got bored when they realised nobody really cared.

3am Sunday morning, woke up and cracked open a can of red bull and a couple of proplus. I saw two lines of cars queued up already so fired my car up, backed it up to the chav tent and woke them all up to the smell of unburnt fuel. Parked in line, and got me a bacon, sausage and egg roll for £4 - it was OK but my dog could have cooked better food. Waited hours and hours, and eventually we got going, well slowly anyway. Neil was somewhere near the front as his car was in show n shine, maybe that's why we were getting there slowly so his motor wouldn't get dirty.
As soon as I saw the exit for the M23 I booted it, in the hope that I would get there earlier but for some reason I always end up at the marina end. I eventually got to Brighton, and sat in the queue for Madeira drive for about 2 hours. With the fact the electric fan didn't work, and I didn't have any coolant in the rad, just plain water, everything started to steam a bit. I whacked the heater on and that seemed to cure it. Just as I got into Madeira drive, it spewed out a fair bit of water on to passers by. It was like driving a greenhouse. After steam cleaning half the cars in Madeira drive, I parked up, locked up and went off to see what was going on.

Same things every year, loads of people, lots of minis, and some trade stands. I had a look round, found Neil, Tina and baby Sam who gave me some advice to sort my car out. Luckily I had bought some stilts so Neil didn't have to look down. I saw Russell who was wearing a skin tight fluorescent jacket and cleaning the finger marks off his newly restored van. It does look nice. Bumped into Mr Kirk for a brief moment.

I picked up a few bits for the car, and wandered back to fill her up with water. Managed to get out of Brighton quite easily, it helps when you know the back roads, took me an hour to get back to Horsham without any overheating, but I did have the heater on all the time.