What a great weekend.
Met Suzanne and Richard at my parents house on Friday afternoon, and got a lift upto the services where we met Little Louis, Paul Tyson and Louis Barbour with the 2cvs. A short trip to the Tunnel then a long drive the other side to a town called 'Huy' in Belgium, and an old Military barracks which was the base camp for the teams.
The Belgians were superb hosts, second to none. They stayed up until midnight to feed and water us before bed with Lasagne and Jupiler. Early on saturday we woke up, unloaded the 2cvs and after a quick briefing and eggs and bacon we set off.
Unfortunately the weather there had been really dry for a week or so and a lot of the greenlanes we followed were dry, and although rutted posed no real problems to the cars, most of which were either 2wd or 4wd, but left in 2wd. We saw a lot of pretty houses and barns, and some pleasant countryside, and bounced about through ruts and ditches.
After a couple of hours we stopped at one of the Belgian guys houses (which was beautiful) for soup and sandwiches and Jupiler before we set off again for the afternoon section. Thankfully in the afternoon there was a bit more mud and the cars got a good coating of mud.
Something that never fails to suprise me with any form of motorsport is the lack of prep some people put into their cars, a couple of breakdowns occured, thankfully not to the two GB cars, but some could have been overcome with a bit of thoughtful preparation. A 4x4 Mehari firing on one cylinder, which I was convinced was down to either a valve or a piston problem, or at least a tappet wound up holding a valve open. It was actually a mis-fitted 123 unit. One car with two engines had no fuel reaching the front engine and no clutch in the rear engine, and was a constant pain, with a new problem on most of the sections. Another car had had its track rod end tack welded on after the bolts had snapped probably some time ago, and it chose the entrance to a downhill section to break off.
Back to base in the evening for Tartiflette (YUM) and Jupiler and then a remarkably early bedtime.
Today was just spent driving home having had a great time, with unquestionalbly perfect hospitality and cheap Jupiler. I certainly want to go back again, hopefully after a few weeks of rain.
Thanks to Richard Knight, Suzanne, Louis Barbour, Little Louis, Bart, paul Tyson and the entire Belgian 4x4 team for a fantastic weekend playing in the mud and 2CVs drinking Jupiler.
My overwhelming feeling of the weekend? Apart from the obvious satisfaction and pleasure at having been able to attend thanks to the generosity of my friends, I felt a little embarrassed, as the natural reaction to having been shown such hospitality is the desire to return the gesture, but alas, it would be impossible to do it in the UK, which is a real shame. Thankfully, The Belgian appetite for 2cv based 4x4 activity seems unrelenting, and their attitude to showing their guests a good time with lots of Jupiler is equally as strong. If they'll have me, I'll be back for more.
This was a crew car at the Austrian WM ten years ago, the guy couldn't bear to see it thrown away and now uses it as his winter car. He'd driven from Austria for the event...
Barts car, great plate!
very tidy Ami8
Broken Mehari...
lonely piss.
The Rosbif cars...
Nice brekkers.
I want this house...
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samfieldhouse wrote:
What I like about I2F is that there is no pretence of democracy.
