The Uphill Gardeners

Right at the end of August, we all headed off to Shelsley Walsh, one of the hallowed grounds of UK motorsport heritage. On this weekend, though, they'd opened the doors to all manner of scruffy herberts, youngsters and other hoodies.

The Retro Rides Gathering is just that, a gathering, not particularly a show, organised by the Retro Rides online forum. It seems (from the outside) to be blessedly free of club politics and BS, and everyone with an interesting car is welcome. Note: interesting. Not necessarily the rarest, most expensive or laden with billet crap, just interesting. The rarity value they seem to prize isn't the most valuable, rather the car of which there are few left, the forgotten. And they genuinely seem to appreciate resourcefulness and engineering ingenuity rather than who can bung the most money at something. Yes, there were a few examples that make you scratch your head, like cars with preposterously extended and convoluted exhaust pipes like those oddball Japs do, and a few cars with one pint tyres on quart rims, but mostly it's just interesting older stuff. The average age of the car owners is also well below that of the usual rod run.

There were a handful of NSCC cars in the mix, such as Nigel's Anglia (above), many of whom were guests of Mick Wilkes' Wacky Racers, who had a display stand there. Phil Winstanley's Moggy was also there after a long absence.

The hill was open on a RWYB basis, although there was no timing so it was purely an opportunity to blast up the hill for fun. Wacky, god bless him, made several runs in the little Bedford van and was warned by the clerk of the course to take it easy after each one. They also invited him back at a later date to put a few timed runs in, saying that the Bedford was as quick out of the gates as many single-seaters...

It's a buzzing little event to go to, out in the middle of nowhere, and a tremendous atmos. Any pre-1990 NSCC car could have turned up and been welcomed into the fold. There were even a few familiar faces from Shakey there - I spotted a Huxley Falcon and Mr Mulligan's brown Buick. You also know you're west of the M5 by the fact that the bar had a couple of different ciders on tap. Looking for something a little different from the usual rod run? Give RRG a go next year.

Eugene