Beaulieu National Meet (26 May 2002)

The West London group met at Fleet Services on the M3 at 9am on a rather oddly sunny/rainy/sunny/rainy morning. Having assembled and mixed in with groups from 1 or possibly even 2 other areas using the same staging post, we all stood about in the rain for half an hour until Bob said "We'd best be off", at which point we all dashed to the loos for a quick pitstop!

One plucky crew thought about leaving topless (and wearing spiky hats) but as it started to pelt down as we left, they thought better of it and we all set off with our roofs up - just as well, as the journey involved several deluges broken by blue sky and sunshine.

Nicole & I had scoped out the route the previous weekend when we happened to be in the New Forest, so we took the lead, and rejoined the M3 with something over 15 cars in convoy! (We're not sure about the final headcount as the snake of cars behind us stretched out of sight in the distance, and some cars may or may not have joined our convoy as we left)

After our uneventful jaunt down the M3 and M27 (going really slowly around the junctions to try to gather the convoy back together a bit) we headed into the New Forest and took a slight detour to admire some of the moors and wildlife as we passed through to Beaulieu. The sun broke out with gusto, so we decided to pull over to give everyone a chance to get theit tops down. By this stage, the original convoy had dwindled to half our original contingent (7 cars), but I thought even that was a miracle after the masses of roundabouts (and some madmen trying to overtake the entire 55mph convoy against oncoming traffic into a busy intersection. I guess he had lives to save and fires to put out or something)

We arrived about 10:45, still in brilliant sunshine, and parked up on the slightly squelchy grass. Around the paddock were several marquees (The MX5 club marquee with a table for the Helicopter Ambulance people, and the traders MX5 City, MX5 Parts, Moss, and Car Hoods). An initial wander around found a total of at least £500 worth of excitingly shiny bits that would look great on my car, and then we headed back for a coffee from our picnic hamper and a bit of a chat!

The cars continued to stream in, with around 300 cars visiting by the end of the day. The weather held out long enough for us to have a good look around the stalls, and I was forced to buy up a nice set of new brake disks before anyone else could get them!

Then I attempted to move my car. Most of the carpark was a little damp, but I seemed to have chosen a great bit of boggy ground to park on. As I attempted to creep carefully out of the rut my wheels had sunk into, they spun for a moment, liberally splashing Nicole with mud (ooops number one!). After rearranging the increasing number of onlookers to either side of the car I had another couple of attempts to no avail, and then stopped abruptly when the wheels spun again and sprayed the lovely clean Miata behind me with mud! (oops number two!) Suddenly all eyes (and there were a lot of them) in the carpark were upon me, so pausing only to leave an abject note of aoplogy on the windscreen, we ran off to the museum to hide!!

Reaching the museum, we then realised the tickets were still in the car. D'oh! (oops number three). Running back to retrieve them, I then met the owner of said yellow Miata, Ian, a very nice and extremely understanding bloke, so we invited him for a consolation coffee. Some of the WLA crew then took a trip around the grounds (and through the museum!) on the monorail, and finally made our way into the museum on foot.

The museum occupied us all for some time - lots of nice shiny cars to look at, and a great collection of historic motorcycle helmets from famous riders (many with scary looking abrasions on them!), and then we headed back to the car for a bite of lunch, remembering the raffle just in the nick of time.

The raffle broke up fairly smartly as the rain closed in again, so we headed off to check out the Beaulieu house, Abbey, and gardens (lots of nice furniture, lovely stone ruins, and plants (respectively) to see there!)

And then it was already time to head home. After one last WLA coffee while we rode out a particularly heavy downpour, Nicole & I braved the obviously unceasing rain to squelch back to the car, arriving just as the sun broke out (of course! :-) Now that the carpark was empty, I was able to easily reverse downhill out of the marshes, so we escaped intact.

A thoroughly good and enjoyable day out, made especially good by the great company of the WLA crew, and it was great to see so many other '5 owners enjoying the day too. Thanks to everyone who helped organise it all!

Jason Williams