| The Mini VII - WAR on Tour (continued) |
Back to England After the berserker wildness of the Welsh road system (outside of built-up areas, of course), WAR 501E was a bit disappointed to be pointed back towards the crowded, speed-camera-happy, yobbo-laden roads of midlands England. Neither did Toad happily anticipate the prospect of droning along the M-roads at a constant 80 MPH, staring at the wheel lug-nuts of lorries, cursing the flapping of the near-useless 40-year-old Lucas designed windscreen wipers. But then the Cotswolds happened. Ah, the Cotswolds, that old tourist trap (or so we thought). In the words of an American immortal: "No one goes there anymore - it's always too crowded." Indeed, the popular Cotswolds destinations (e.g., Chipping Campden) can be a bit trampled. But if you get off the trodden path a bit, magical places like the village of Stanton await, all lavender bushes and creamy stone buildings dated 1615. In fact, it was right in the square in Stanton where Toad took his overwhelmingly favorite photograph of WAR (394KB!). The base of operations was the eponymous Cleeve Hill Hotel. On the second day of the stay, Toad could barely repress his eructations of glee when the Morgan contingent showed. Through some bizarre coincidence, the Morgan Sports Car Club was holding its 50th Anniversary Meet in the area, so the Cotswolds were wall-to-wall Mogs of every conceivable variety, on three wheels and four. In the hotel parking lot, WAR was truly out-flanked by troglodytian machinery (369KB!)! Another less-obvious but highly rewarding destination in the Cotswolds is Snowshill Manor (circa 1500). This was purchased by the prototypical English eccentric Charles Paget Wade in 1919 in order to provide a place for his collection of the weirdest English artefacts (would you believe the world's largest collection of ancestors of the bicycle - no, those common penny-farthings, but devices that you sit on and push yourself along the ground with your feet?). Certainly Toad's winner for most interesting museum in the U.K. And the grounds are spectacular. And Madame Toad surely did enjoy tea on the terrace at Snowshill. Other worthy destinations in the area are Lower Slaughter (love those names!), with its bucolic walking paths. And Sudeley Castle, with the usual ho-hum royal connections spanning a thousand years, makes for an absolutely splendid afternoon. The Castle Gardens contain an unusual Knot Garden, a bit of fluff that those filthy Cromwellian wretches almost succeeded in totally deleting from English history. Go there. Finally, it was time to grit our teeth, depart the Cotswolds, and plunge back into the nastiness of the Midlands. Months ago, Toad had booked a visit of the Morgan works (one can't just show up on the spur of the moment). At one time, the Malvern Hills must have provided a wonderful scenic vista. But now it's all just a continous suburb of Worcester, with those bleeding speed cameras (damn, Toad swears he saw the flash, flash, flash of the strobe lights in that 30 MPH zone in Worcester - but somehow that British lottery ticket never arrived - hmmm, perhaps they couldn't trace WAR across the Atlantic?). The Morgan works were as anticipated, a wonderous blend of the old and the new, the high-tech and the agricultural (277KB!). Production was still ramping up on their new Aero 8, and it was interesting wandering around the Morgan facilites to see the Aero 8s with serial numbers 16, 18, 20, 28, 31, 32, and 33 in various seemingly random stages of assembly (with another five or so cars being out of full view). Toad thinks the Aero 8 is gorgeous machine, until the body is installed upon it. Not much time left now. It's a bit of a rush to get WAR to the Southampton docks for his pleasure cruise across the Atlantic under the care of Messrs. Wallenius Wilhelmsen. But of course along the way Toad MUST make a stop at the Temple to Dead British Industry at Gaydon, otherwise known as the Heritage Motor Centre. Whatever went wrong with the enterprise? A bit sad. But the 1964, 1965, and 1967 Monte Carlo overall-winning Morris Cooper S's did make for a magnificent display (33 EJB, AJB 44B, and LBL 6D, respectively) in the museum complex. WAR 501E was left in the parking lot, shouting: drive me in the doors, drive me in the doors. Finally, Southampton. On the streets, WAR did have a nose-to-nose encounter with one of these Johnny-come-lately pretenders trying to marry into the family. WAR was left off at the docks in what seemed to be a rather casual business transaction (oh, just drop off the key - we can call a taxi to take you back downtown). The next time that we saw WAR, it was on the other side of the ocean, on the Charleston docks, in perfect order (whew!), ready to start his American adventures. But that is another story for another time. |
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