Every now and then you read articles in the club magazine or forum about people who have taken their Stag on some form of long journey and sing the praises of the design and the comfort etc etc.
Personally, although I use my Stag in all weathers (and always with the roof down…) I cant think of a single journey of over 100 miles the car has been on in the 8 years I have owned it. In fact, due to clutch frailties, falling oil pressure and me buying a TVR, the Stag has had a couple of fairly easy years.
A few months ago, I branched out onto the alternative forums of Pistonheads.com and Club Triumph in search of new things. In addition to enjoying the sillyness that is “tunnelling”, I read with interest about Club Triumphs Historic Counties run. It combined a good run-out in the car (I am sure I saw 400 miles somewhere) with a couple of autotests, so without a lot of thought, the application went in the post.
I was interested in the run as my good mate “Kryten” from the SOC forum had been encouraged out of mechanical retirement and had transformed my car for the better. It had its first judder free clutch for a couple of years, a new crank and a few other bits and pieces that had it running so smoothly. Definitely time to see how it fared on one of these long journeys we read about..
Getting a co-driver had a couple of false starts, with IanB dropping out due to overlap with his holiday and eventually, MGC Steve agreed to sit along-side for what I still thought was a simple over-night journey.
A few days before the event, I gave him the details (I was going to read the detail but hadn’t got around to it) and soon had a message from him saying “I thought you said it started in Leicester? – its actually Lancashire…”. Starting from Kent, that would be 250 miles before we even got to the start. I wouldn’t have entered if I had checked properly, but it did show the right level of attention to detail for the navigator!
The big day arrived and I had undertaken (for me) an impressive amount of preparation. I had bought a new spare, packed a jack, had the drivers seat base re-foamed, downloaded the latest speed cameras onto the satnav for the whole of England and even had the head lights up-graded for the night section of the run. The car had been used every day that week and was running perfectly, right up to our scheduled start time of 9.00am when it completely refused to start!!!
I think it did this because it knew what was likely to happen to it in the next 24 hours. It was a close call, to pull the cover off the TVR and go in that, when for no reason, the Stag burst in to life and was running fine as if nothing happened. Doubt was firmly lodged in my mind for the first time.
The Dartford tunnel was soon cleared and the journey up the A1 was fast and despite it being early spring, not too cold with the roof down. The car was going well on this road and it seemed somehow right to take the longer but more relaxed route. The M1 is full of polish lorries and the A1 would have been the sort of road my Stag would have seen a lot of when it was new and was owned by someone at ITV for driving to filming locations all over the UK.
Making very good time, we were the first to arrive at an on-route service station meeting point and were soon joined by a rather fine looking competition prepared light blue Spitfire. Roll cages, big spot lights, dash mouted dials and trip counters. This car looked a bit serious and by the time we left for the convoy to the check-in, there was a good selection of cars, with most of them being well prepared for enthusiastic driving.
In the car park used for check-in, we had a good selection of Triumphs and an even bigger selection of massive spotlights. Roll cages were fairly common and there was even a rebuild of a distributer going on using ad-hoc spare parts from people boots and trying successfully to get the car running before the off!
The teams were briefed and we all had to sign-up to be responsible (as if we would be anything else) on the unknown roads ahead.
It was now late afternoon, getting a bit chilly (we were up-north!) So far, we were 8 hours and 260 miles in and the event hadn’t started. We did now know what we had to do though, which was basically drive all over Yorkshire and the midlands finding remote reservoirs and getting through a minimum of number of compulsory counties and some optional ones as well if you were competitive or stupid. Getting a picture of the place or boundary sign to prove you have been there.
Before we set-off for the cross-county adventure, there was the small matter of navigating an autotest set-up at a local industrial estate. Nothing that anyone says will convince me that a Stag running standard suspension is set-up for such an event and this was proved in the next three minutes.
The finest (funniest?) moment was the tight u-turn at the far end of the auto test when the car, being driven as fast as I thought possible, was set-up by me for 1st gear power over steer and achieved a degree of understeer only previously experienced on snow and ice… Thankfully for the front of my car, someone had the foresight to set the cones up a good distance from the industrial unit.
We had a list of places that we could choose to visit, provided we ended-up at a stopping point in midlands during the early hours of the morning. Too early or too late and points achieved for visiting extra counties and landmarks would be taken away. It was a simple plan of guessing the best route, with the minimum diversions to cut County borders and get as many landmarks in as possible.
By mid evening, and 12 hours and 450 or so miles, it was time to hand over the driving to Steve. Apart from the anxiety of having someone drive your pride and joy around the lanes of Yorkshire, it was soon apparent that I was wasn’t able to read the ultra-small print on the map with the in-car torch and it I ended up sharing his glasses to plot our way through some amazing countryside (shame it was dark).
At the start, we were advised not to be overly ambitious in the number of Counties we planned to visit. We duly did this and discovered somewhere in the middle of nowhere that we were probably going to be late to the half way point, so the obvious thing to do was speed-up. At least it was until we got stopped by the boys in blue for flying past them on a dual-carriage way with the 4 dipped and 4 main beam headlights on full.
They were particularly impressed we had the hood off in the middle of night and after a good chat with them about what we were doing (and why my headlights were so bright) they let us on our way with a warning about not stopping in a couple of local villages due to the probability of outsiders receiving a deliverance like experience!!!
Just before midnight, we ended putting the roof up for the rest of the night. This was essential to stop the onset of hypothermia (at least in me!) and we took to the now deserted motorways to try and finish the first half of the trip with only minor time penalties.
The half way point was in Telford and we arrived at 2.00 in the morning, with penalty points and now needed to be in Ipswich no earlier than 7.30 and no later than 9.00 to register for the 2nd autotest. To make it interesting, there was to be another set of compulsory counties or landmarks to visit on the route to Ipswich and all things considered, it seemed a relatively easy homeward stretch as we sat down for a compulsory 30 minute break.
It could have been the tiredness or the effects of mild hypothermia, but it was frustrating beyond belief to be told that everyone had to travel from the midlands to Ipswich via Wales, yes via Wales, or be disqualified.
I had a sense of humour failure.
We debated heading straight home or finishing without going to Wales and being disqualified. In the end, we went with the flow. This was the right decision but not an easy one at that time of night. There were some amazing roads on the whole trip but none of them were better than the roads through Wales and the Scamera warnings on the satnav were appreciated on the empty roads in the dead of night.
At the start of this adventure, we stopped for every landmark. Took a reasonable photo, checked and kept some records. As we headed across country, we ended up having the arm out of the window, not stopping or even caring to much about how convincing or relevant a given sign would be at the final check-in.
On our chosen route through Oxford and around Milton Keynes, we had the pleasure of watching dawn break and the sun rising for a lovely spring morning and it was soon time to get the roof down again. This leg of the journey was simply about finishing and soon we were arriving in Ipswich. Amazingly, we arrived at the same time as a group of people that had gone further west and then south from Wales, to Bristol!!
It had been over 24 hours since I reversed the car out the garage and the opportunity to complete the final autotest was declined in favour of stretching the legs and swapping stories and laughter with other competitors.
In total, when we got home, it was 1000 miles at an average 44 mph. Thanks to my Kryten tune, the car did ok on petrol – 32 mpg for the tank full with the roof up and high 20’s overall. As we were often told, the Stag was like a limo compared with some of the competition prepared cars, and easily lived up to its grand tourer reputation, at least in this company.
All that this leaves is the 2012 event and whether to enter again. The rally starts at the finish location of the previous year but you don’t find out the end point until all of the entry cheques are cleared. The compulsory Counties you have to visit give a route maximum of 400 miles and obviously a lot more than that if you are at all competitive. That could mean ending up near Scotland or Cornwall and a long journey home in a tired state. Hopefully, I will be there…
Personally, although I use my Stag in all weathers (and always with the roof down…) I cant think of a single journey of over 100 miles the car has been on in the 8 years I have owned it. In fact, due to clutch frailties, falling oil pressure and me buying a TVR, the Stag has had a couple of fairly easy years.
A few months ago, I branched out onto the alternative forums of Pistonheads.com and Club Triumph in search of new things. In addition to enjoying the sillyness that is “tunnelling”, I read with interest about Club Triumphs Historic Counties run. It combined a good run-out in the car (I am sure I saw 400 miles somewhere) with a couple of autotests, so without a lot of thought, the application went in the post.
I was interested in the run as my good mate “Kryten” from the SOC forum had been encouraged out of mechanical retirement and had transformed my car for the better. It had its first judder free clutch for a couple of years, a new crank and a few other bits and pieces that had it running so smoothly. Definitely time to see how it fared on one of these long journeys we read about..
Getting a co-driver had a couple of false starts, with IanB dropping out due to overlap with his holiday and eventually, MGC Steve agreed to sit along-side for what I still thought was a simple over-night journey.
A few days before the event, I gave him the details (I was going to read the detail but hadn’t got around to it) and soon had a message from him saying “I thought you said it started in Leicester? – its actually Lancashire…”. Starting from Kent, that would be 250 miles before we even got to the start. I wouldn’t have entered if I had checked properly, but it did show the right level of attention to detail for the navigator!
The big day arrived and I had undertaken (for me) an impressive amount of preparation. I had bought a new spare, packed a jack, had the drivers seat base re-foamed, downloaded the latest speed cameras onto the satnav for the whole of England and even had the head lights up-graded for the night section of the run. The car had been used every day that week and was running perfectly, right up to our scheduled start time of 9.00am when it completely refused to start!!!
I think it did this because it knew what was likely to happen to it in the next 24 hours. It was a close call, to pull the cover off the TVR and go in that, when for no reason, the Stag burst in to life and was running fine as if nothing happened. Doubt was firmly lodged in my mind for the first time.
The Dartford tunnel was soon cleared and the journey up the A1 was fast and despite it being early spring, not too cold with the roof down. The car was going well on this road and it seemed somehow right to take the longer but more relaxed route. The M1 is full of polish lorries and the A1 would have been the sort of road my Stag would have seen a lot of when it was new and was owned by someone at ITV for driving to filming locations all over the UK.
Making very good time, we were the first to arrive at an on-route service station meeting point and were soon joined by a rather fine looking competition prepared light blue Spitfire. Roll cages, big spot lights, dash mouted dials and trip counters. This car looked a bit serious and by the time we left for the convoy to the check-in, there was a good selection of cars, with most of them being well prepared for enthusiastic driving.
In the car park used for check-in, we had a good selection of Triumphs and an even bigger selection of massive spotlights. Roll cages were fairly common and there was even a rebuild of a distributer going on using ad-hoc spare parts from people boots and trying successfully to get the car running before the off!
The teams were briefed and we all had to sign-up to be responsible (as if we would be anything else) on the unknown roads ahead.
It was now late afternoon, getting a bit chilly (we were up-north!) So far, we were 8 hours and 260 miles in and the event hadn’t started. We did now know what we had to do though, which was basically drive all over Yorkshire and the midlands finding remote reservoirs and getting through a minimum of number of compulsory counties and some optional ones as well if you were competitive or stupid. Getting a picture of the place or boundary sign to prove you have been there.
Before we set-off for the cross-county adventure, there was the small matter of navigating an autotest set-up at a local industrial estate. Nothing that anyone says will convince me that a Stag running standard suspension is set-up for such an event and this was proved in the next three minutes.
The finest (funniest?) moment was the tight u-turn at the far end of the auto test when the car, being driven as fast as I thought possible, was set-up by me for 1st gear power over steer and achieved a degree of understeer only previously experienced on snow and ice… Thankfully for the front of my car, someone had the foresight to set the cones up a good distance from the industrial unit.
We had a list of places that we could choose to visit, provided we ended-up at a stopping point in midlands during the early hours of the morning. Too early or too late and points achieved for visiting extra counties and landmarks would be taken away. It was a simple plan of guessing the best route, with the minimum diversions to cut County borders and get as many landmarks in as possible.
By mid evening, and 12 hours and 450 or so miles, it was time to hand over the driving to Steve. Apart from the anxiety of having someone drive your pride and joy around the lanes of Yorkshire, it was soon apparent that I was wasn’t able to read the ultra-small print on the map with the in-car torch and it I ended up sharing his glasses to plot our way through some amazing countryside (shame it was dark).
At the start, we were advised not to be overly ambitious in the number of Counties we planned to visit. We duly did this and discovered somewhere in the middle of nowhere that we were probably going to be late to the half way point, so the obvious thing to do was speed-up. At least it was until we got stopped by the boys in blue for flying past them on a dual-carriage way with the 4 dipped and 4 main beam headlights on full.
They were particularly impressed we had the hood off in the middle of night and after a good chat with them about what we were doing (and why my headlights were so bright) they let us on our way with a warning about not stopping in a couple of local villages due to the probability of outsiders receiving a deliverance like experience!!!
Just before midnight, we ended putting the roof up for the rest of the night. This was essential to stop the onset of hypothermia (at least in me!) and we took to the now deserted motorways to try and finish the first half of the trip with only minor time penalties.
The half way point was in Telford and we arrived at 2.00 in the morning, with penalty points and now needed to be in Ipswich no earlier than 7.30 and no later than 9.00 to register for the 2nd autotest. To make it interesting, there was to be another set of compulsory counties or landmarks to visit on the route to Ipswich and all things considered, it seemed a relatively easy homeward stretch as we sat down for a compulsory 30 minute break.
It could have been the tiredness or the effects of mild hypothermia, but it was frustrating beyond belief to be told that everyone had to travel from the midlands to Ipswich via Wales, yes via Wales, or be disqualified.
I had a sense of humour failure.
We debated heading straight home or finishing without going to Wales and being disqualified. In the end, we went with the flow. This was the right decision but not an easy one at that time of night. There were some amazing roads on the whole trip but none of them were better than the roads through Wales and the Scamera warnings on the satnav were appreciated on the empty roads in the dead of night.
At the start of this adventure, we stopped for every landmark. Took a reasonable photo, checked and kept some records. As we headed across country, we ended up having the arm out of the window, not stopping or even caring to much about how convincing or relevant a given sign would be at the final check-in.
On our chosen route through Oxford and around Milton Keynes, we had the pleasure of watching dawn break and the sun rising for a lovely spring morning and it was soon time to get the roof down again. This leg of the journey was simply about finishing and soon we were arriving in Ipswich. Amazingly, we arrived at the same time as a group of people that had gone further west and then south from Wales, to Bristol!!
It had been over 24 hours since I reversed the car out the garage and the opportunity to complete the final autotest was declined in favour of stretching the legs and swapping stories and laughter with other competitors.
In total, when we got home, it was 1000 miles at an average 44 mph. Thanks to my Kryten tune, the car did ok on petrol – 32 mpg for the tank full with the roof up and high 20’s overall. As we were often told, the Stag was like a limo compared with some of the competition prepared cars, and easily lived up to its grand tourer reputation, at least in this company.
All that this leaves is the 2012 event and whether to enter again. The rally starts at the finish location of the previous year but you don’t find out the end point until all of the entry cheques are cleared. The compulsory Counties you have to visit give a route maximum of 400 miles and obviously a lot more than that if you are at all competitive. That could mean ending up near Scotland or Cornwall and a long journey home in a tired state. Hopefully, I will be there…
. You had me chortling at various points throughout
. I hope to enter one of those events myself next year which should be easier now that my parents are relocating up here so we will have somebody to look after our son. 
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