May 19th-21st: New Forest:
Weather not looking good for two of our days only getting better for the journey home, rain pretty-well guaranteed for the 2nd half of the trip down and so it proved. Sat Nav was a nightmare, decided to try Google instead of Wayze as it allows you to program stops which I wanted to do to route us across country for the last 40 miles or so. Left to their own devices they would send us on motorways which as well as being a dog-leg the M3 and M27 are race-tracks and no fun in a roadster at all and especially top down, by comparison the M40 is fine. In my naivety I assumed if we didn't actually stop at one of the stops then it would reroute onto the next, like it does if you don't follow the indicated route. But no. As well as insisting you drive to the geographical point it has selected for a town or village (which is probably off the through route) - even though it shows the onward route, it insists you do actually stop and acknowledge a notification. The only way to skip that is to call up the list of stops and delete them one by one as you pass them, which is impossible to do when driving. The upshot is that when driving past one of the stops it then keeps giving instructions to go back. In the end I had to turn it off but needed route guidance for the last few miles so had to stop and reprogram for our final destination. All in pouring rain - not fun.
Second day we had some walks planned, rain likely. Had to pay for parking at Whitefield Moor using RingGo, didn't fancy downloading the app there and then but fortunately the phone number worked after a bit of repetition. A good walk across heathland, through forest and across streams, with cuckoos calling and a hawk of some kind swooping through the shrubbery right in front of us. Back in Brockenhurst in the afternoon for a coffee loads of ponies, many with very young foals to delight the Navigator. In the end no rain, no sun either but cooler is probably better for walking although we missed sitting in the hotel gardens for a late afternoon drink.
Journey home the sun shone so a very pleasant top down trip - as far as the A34 when I could see two lanes of crawling traffic going in our direction. Had to queue to get on but fortunately the hold-up was only a couple of hundred yards further on - two cars on the side of the road one clear of the carriageway and the other with barely a corner on the edge. But of course the numpties had shut the left-hand lane - I thought their job was to keep traffic moving? After that a very easy journey up to the M40. Stopped at the A34/M4 services, a Bentley Turbo R parked next to us - talk about little and large! Had a chin-wag with the owner who had an MGC. At the M40 a first for us - no queues to get on, normally we've had to crawl the last few miles. That was equally clear, advance warnings of a 20 minute hold-up just before the M42 - I had put the sat-nav back on the for last part to get advance warning of things like this and it was saying to get off at Warwick. Those warnings and the sat-nav rerouting vanished shortly after, but the warnings came back immediately before Warwick so I got off anyway and we had a pleasant drive home through the countryside for the last few miles. 300 miles with Bee performing as well as ever, and nice to get admiring comments several times over the three days.
May 3rd: Charnwood Caper North Leicester MG Club:
4th time for us. After a month of sun the forecast was for much rain! Fortunately that came the previous evening and night. The day dawned very overcast and quite cool so hood up to the usual start at Quorn station and a T and P. Top down for the run, still very overcast but getting brighter through the day through some lovely countryside to finish in sunshine. First half marred somewhat by the person in front driving slowly, eventually picked up a convoy of about have a dozen but he carried on seemingly oblivious. Very few 2-lane sections that would have allowed an overtake and most were very short before a turn into the next single-track. At the half-way stop we got out again before him and most of the others, then didn't see another car for the rest of the run apart from about three passing us when we pulled over for our lunch break. We've noticed this before, we leave a lot of runners at the half-way stop but when we get to the end they are all parked up! Very friendly marshalls, and a very accurate route book where the bottom of each page had the inter for the first instruction on the next page, which avoids you missing a turn if it's only 0.1 miles! Not seen that before but a good idea. 190 0trouble-free miles so a nice gallop for Bee.
April 23rd: Glorious weather so an extended mid-week run of 50+ miles over a couple of hours. Notable events were restricted to a woman walking a horse just starting down a very narrow twisty bit but when she saw I was going that way she came back up, which was very nice of her. Don't very often go via Bromsgrove but whenever I have for a long time now there have been massive roadworks on the A38 - being going on since 2020 apparently. The rest was very enjoyable indeed.
April 5th: Another Sunny Sunday, but a reduced paper run to fill the tank - with no water, mud, incompetents or roadworks. With fuel supplies 'Trumped' I need to be sure I have plenty for the first organised run even though it's not for a couple of weeks and only a one-dayer. Some stations locally run out and long queues but Sunday morning should be quiet - and so it proved. All grades on all pumps appeared to be available and only one other car ... everyone else panic-bought already? Local Tesco and our usual station 3rd cheapest (for E5) out of more than 30 within five miles so a bonus ... but pity the 'poor' (!) Diesel driver with prices typically 30p per litre dearer than E10 and on the cusp of £2 at Shell.
Also thinking ahead a month or so to a booked free-style three-dayer to the New Forest. Based on past experiences of long trips in theory we could do it on a tankful in Bee especially carrying an extra gallon, but we may have to resort to the Mercedes.
Near the end engaging overdrive took a couple of seconds longer than normal, repeated tests were back to normal - ironic as it was only a couple of days ago that I put my 2-penn'orth in on one of the fora to someone saying his OD had stopped working.
March 15th: Another "At last!" ... the first sunny Sunday morning to get the paper in months (this penned many years ago). This one slightly marred by 300 yards of traffic-controlled 'road works' through a village with absolutely nothing - holes or equipment - behind the barriers for the full length. Still keeping to the busier lanes to avoid water running off the fields so peeved to find a road closure and a diversion ... which took me through some much smaller, wetter and muddier lanes!
First crank delivered just a 'clonk' so the very intermittent issue that happened twice in July 2024 and once in October 2025 is still evident.
A week later even nicer weather, and a nicer run with no clonks, incompetents, car transporters, mud or lying water.
March 5th: At last - a sunny run! A weekday afternoon so more traffic than I would have liked, compounded by very early on someone in a right-turn lane at a roundabout going straight on into the single lane exit I was already occupying! At least the horn works ... Hardly past that in a narrow country lane and catch up with two fully laden car transporters causing chaos for oncoming traffic never mind those of us stuck behind. What they were doing there is anyone's guess, but I have read in the past that their sat-navs seem to route them shortest rather than fastest. One clonk under the driver's seat when firing up which was a new one to keep an ear on.
February 21st: What a difference three days can make. Enough rain to wash the salt off but not dry enough to get out for a run. It was dry and warm enough to get Bee on the drive though and have another look at the advisories of 'steering rack inner joint wear', and find they aren't. Also got the Mercedes washed - first time for many months. A couple of days later it gets really warm and sunny but unfortunately other duties preclude driving Bee.
February 18th: Second day with no rain ... but unusually Solihull have put salt down even though it's not dropped to freezing let alone below, so now a wait for enough rain to wash it off. Shouldn't be long, the forecast is rain or drizzle every day with no sun for the next two weeks ... but some snow as well so maybe more salt ...
January 24th: Finally get Bee out for a half-decent run of about an hour, first time since probably September or October, I still have the same fuel in the tank bought in August! Still not risking the usual lanes as even the lesser A roads still have some lying water. Some sun but cloud rolling in after a decent morning so - for the first time ever - hood up! It's the kind of day that I would normally have used Vee and top down in Bee would look a bit daft. Normally it's only up for MOTs and planned runs that are wet but with Vee having gone to pastures new hood up in Bee will become more common.
January 8th: More snow, and heavier, we were still digging out stuck cars three days later and it didn't completely go off the roads for a further three days:
Loads of rain following that (plus another night of frost in between) so hopefully when it dries out I'll be able to get Bee out again after another month of 'rest'.
January 1st: It snowed, and with below freezing temperatures (this after two days of full sun)
the roads will have been salted so no prospect of any outings for Bee until a decent amount of rain has fallen and dried up again.
This years jigsaw - needs no introduction, except to say it is from a painting by Trevor Mitchell who specialises in 'classic' scenes many of which have been turned into jigsaws, metal signs and other products:
