Caledonian Classic & Historic Motorsport Club
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The 'dream' cars, though some are the owners own. Can you match the car to the crew?









Entry List

Full Results

Graeme Gallaoway's Anglia
La Carrera Lockdown - 13 to 16 April 2020
2020 – this was to be the year to get out and do tours – many were planned, kicking off with the Argyll Classic on 29th March, the HCC Spring Tour, Drive It Day, the Red Hackle ….. etc. etc. – the list goes on. Car all prepped, accommodation booked, and then – a few Chinese folk with a cough developed into a global pandemic and suddenly – all motorsport, competition and tours – CANCELLED!!! So what to do?



Mags Campbell came up with idea of a virtual tour – brilliant!, but how could we run it? We put our heads together and came up with a plan – a kind of table-top treasure hunt using maps and a route supplied by the organisers to the participants, and questions about the route, the places on or near the route and other little tricky tests to exercise the grey matter of the crews. We would send out a day’s route and questions each day for 4 days and get the answers back on day 5 to give them a bit of time. Awards would be in the form of a Gold, Silver or Bronze certificate, depending on the number of points scored. The overall winner would get a special award of something “real”.

Just to make things interesting we asked the entrants to tell us which “virtual” car they would like to enter in, although they could enter in their own car. The idea was to let people’s imagination run riot as to what can they would love to use, regardless of expense, rarity etc. At the end of the event there was to be a “Concours d’Elegance” where fellow entrants could pick the virtual Car of the Event. 

So dates were decided and we asked entries to be in by 10th April via the CCHMSC web site. Mags was the chief administrator or Secretary of the Event taking the entries, making up the entry list and dealing with all the emails, and Dave was the route planner – doing the maps and setting the questions.

We expected maybe half a dozen entries as we didn’t know how this type of event would go down - by the closing date we had over 30, and being generous we accepted a few late entries to end up with 35. The great surprise was where they came from – not only our own Scottish lot, but entries from all over England, Northern Ireland and even France and Italy!!

So, to the event. On Monday 13th April, the 2 maps and questions covering day 1 were sent out. The route started at the Broxden Roundabout, Perth and heading initially west then turned north towards Glen Almond and the Sma’ Glen and over Glen Quaich to Kenmore and Tummel Bridge, then east to Pitlochry and over the hills to Kirkmichael. From here we headed towards Glenisla and bypassing Kirriemuir, looped back round to the first overnight at Forfar. The first day questions were reasonably easy just to ease the participants into the event – nothing that couldn’t be found out with Google Maps and Wikipedia.

Day 2 kicked off heading north east towards Brechin then north via Edzell, Fettercairn and the Cairn o’Mount. A question on the height above sea level of the summit of Cairn o’Mount caught out a few. From here it was across-country via Torphins to the A944 and Alford. Questions about the Transport Museum didn’t seem to cause any problems. Then it was on to the overnight in Huntly with a question about the overall distance of the day in yards catching out one or two.

Day 3 started with a simple navigation test with 5 “tulip” diagrams giving the route. Reference to Street View in Google Maps gave the answers to filling in the blanks on the sign posts at each of the junctions – should have been VERY simple, but some still got it wrong! A trick question about the number of public phone boxes that were passed even tricked the route organiser. One phone box shown on the map was actually off-route so didn’t count, however a virtual drive-through the route on Street View showed an old red phone box in a garden. But that didn’t count either as it wasn’t a “public” phone box – so the outcome – NO public phone boxes. Confused me – and a few others too.
From the end of the tulip section the route turned south west heading into Speyside and distillery country with a couple of distillery related questions thrown in. Overnight was at Grantown on Spey.

Next day – and the last one – continued south west from Grantown passing the Strathspey Railway and Broomhill Railway Station. The question about its alternative name threw quite a lot of people – did they never watch “Monarch of the Glen”? It was, of course Glenbogle. Maybe they didn’t get the programme in Italy!! Another question that confused a few was the interior décor of the public toilet at Laggan. A bit of ferreting about on Google Maps would have shown a photo of the beautiful pinkish red interior. From Dalwhinnie the questions on the route consisted of working out the shortest route back to the finish at Broxden Roundabout via 3 intermediate waypoints. It was actually reasonably easy with the aid of Google Maps, with only one slightly tricky distance.

So how did the crews perform? The answer sheets were all sent in on time and marked (with a good bit of leniency!) – the results were quite surprising. No-one scored a perfect 40, the highest score being 36 from Barry and Helen Stewart in the 1959 Lotus 7, taking a Gold certificate and the overall winners’ award of engraved glasses.

In all there were 4 Golds, scoring 36 or above (for the purposes of the awards half points were rounded up) including the winners, 15 Silvers (31-35 points) and 15 Bronzes (up to 30 points), with 1 retirement, being that of Charlie and Susan Donaldson supposedly with “overheating” – What of – the brain? – the computer???

The Italian crews did particularly well with 3 Silver and one Gold award. Anyway congratulations to all.

The award certificates were sent out by email on Sunday 19th April. The Concours d’Elegance was voted on by most crews and the outright winner was the magnificent 1936 MG SA of Roddy and Sylvia Main. Apparently this car was chosen because Roddy remembers his uncle having one many years ago and being extremely impressed by it.



So that was the Club’s first ever virtual tour – but maybe not the last? Amazingly enough in the last few days Mags and Dave received emails from Italy with details of a very similar event being run by the Club dei Venti all’Ora of Trieste, they say “inspired” by our event – so you never know these types of event my go “viral” – but not like Corona Virus we hope!!  Full Details

Updated 4 May 2020
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