TEAM ADVENTURE
Danny and James head South West on a marvellous museum safari
WORDS DANNY HOPKINS & JAMES WALSHE PHOTOS MATT HOWELL, DANNY HOPKINS & JAMES WALSHE
We are blessed with some fantastic motor museums in the UK, but the recent closure of the Moretonhampstead Motor Museum and a blaze at the Microcar Museum in Lincolnshire show very clearly how fragile they can be. Quite simply, we must use them or lose them. Full coffers create longevity and, well, we owe it to our grandkids to make sure these fantastic places are thriving.
So, Danny and James headed off to a selection of museums in the South West of England. Choosing two of their favourite classics, the chaps took a couple of days out to explore and assess some truly unique classic car destinations. Perhaps this might inspire you to do your own museum safari – maybe even give impetus to fathers and sons (or daughters) to take a Father’s Day trip to a museum or two. There’s no better way to spend Father’s Day.
Superb tribute to motor racing.
Beaulieu, classic car HQ.
Beaulieu’s unique and unmissable collection.
Silbury Hill second tallest manmade mound in Europe.
Danny Hopkins Day 1: Beaulieu
I start early to avoid the nightmare that is the M25 and then hit the M3 before Saturday morning really gets going. Within just two hours I have breakfasted and am heading into the New Forest. My ‘other’ MX-5, the silver NB I rescued from a driveway seven years ago, is the steed of choice for the next three days and it is doing its usual job of being pretty much perfect for every road scenario. It deals with the motorways in reasonable comfort and now, having eaten a bacon roll on the edge of the National Park, the top is dropped and the spirit of Jinba Ittai, ‘horse and rider’ is fully engaged.
This doesn’t mean I am driving fast; the new Forest is a 40mph zone because its animals roam free, including the wild horses. But even at a cautious 40 this horse and rider are united, in perfect balance, in the mid-morning sunshine. Feeling a oneness between myself and a car is not uncommon, but it is experienced most clearly in my MX-5. Every corner, at any speed, is responded to exactly as I intend – especially when gently steering around a horse.
My arrival at my destination is a familiar one. There are many great museums in the UK but, for me, right at the top of the tree is the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu and today is rather special one – Spring Autojumble. One of the perks of my autojumble ticket is free entry to the exhibition halls. It means that, after some serious rusty foraging, I can escape the sun and immerse myself in history, nostalgia and a few surprises.
The grin doesn’t end in an MX-5.
Beaulieu has the full range – from veterans to Honda Insight.
Danny Hopkins Day 2: Beaulieu to Calne
Leaving Beaulieu the following day, I head north early aiming for a rendezvous with Mr Walshe
and his dad’s Citroën Dyane. Destination is the Atwell-Wilson Motor Museum in Calne and I decide to change my angle of attack by whizzing up the A34 to Newbury and hitting one of my favourite bits of tarmac in the world, the A4.
Between Newbury and Bath, this road is a magnificent example of what motoring used to be like. It was one of the main roads between London and the West of England before the coming of the M4 and is a broad two-way A-road, these days lightly trafficked. It traverses some fine downland scenery and is an MX-5 play pen. It’s a straight drive, but with long sweeping curves and a great road surface. What a fantastic road to explore, with fascinating stopping places like Hungerford, Marlborough and Silbury Hill. I arrive at the Atwell-Wilson Motor Museum with a huge grin on my face to meet James… who is there with his dad!
Rex meets us for a museum mooch in Bourton.
Atwell-Wilson’s Jaguar collection includes newly donated XJ8.
Cotswold classics everywhere!
Atwell – filled to the rafters with good stuff.
James Walshe Day 2: Bourton-on-the-Water to Calne
While Danny potters his way from Beaulieu to Wiltshire, my first stop is Bourton-on-the-Water – familiar turf for me, as I use the Fosseway as my regular run between the office in Peterborough and family in the south Cotswolds. While it’s wise to avoid this area in the height of summer, late spring is a good time to be charmed by the Cotswold Motoring Museum. I especially enjoy the recreation of Bourton born Jack Lake’s country garage. The story of local hero Jack (1891-1981) is told in his own voice which, as a fellow Gloucestershire boy, was especially captivating.
I hit the road in my dad’s 1980 Citroën Dyane, whose Mimosa Yellow snout has snuffled its way around every corner of the Cotswolds over the years, and wonder what Jack would think of it. For those unfamiliar with the 2CV-based Dyane, it’s less strange than you might imagine. That 602cc air-cooled flat-twin, although noisy, adores being thrashed and so it relishes you wringing out every ounce of speed. The Roman’s arrow-straight A429 allows you enjoy the car’s pillowy soft ride too and, with the canvas roof rolled all the way back, affords a fine view above – including the underside of Cotswold Airport’s own Boeing 747. I stop for a brew at the airport café and, after a mooch around the Bristol Britannia and the British Phantom Aviation Group’s project planes, the Cotswolds continue to unfurl before me… lush rolling hills peppered with stone villages and church spires, bright bunting flapping in the mild spring breeze.
Beyond the pretty market town of Malmesbury, we cross into Wiltshire, chopping through Chippenham and Calne, and arrive at the Atwell-Wilson Motor Museum. My parents have driven the 25 minutes from their home (probably to check I haven’t broken the Dyane). It’s also dad’s birthday so the perfect chance to grab some tea and cake in the venue’s café, which is one of the many ‘beyond museum’ experiences Atwell-Wilson offers visitors.
Wallace & Gromit’s mode of transport.
Dyane is a fine springtime classic.
F1 display at Atwell is something special.
Danny Hopkins Calne to Sparkford
Atwell is superb and it’s great to see James enjoying the visit with his parents. Reminds me of every museum visit and day out I have enjoyed with mine. It is what ignites our enthusiasms, those unforgettable days when we see something to fall in love with. James and I bid his folks farewell and head south into the downs and on to the plains, heading for white horses and views.
One white horse in particular stands out and that’s Westbury’s beauty. Situated just under Bratton Camp, records suggest that the horse was originally cut in the late 1600s, probably to commemorate the Battle of Ethandun, thought to have taken place at Bratton Camp in AD 878. We head up onto the down for a closer look and we are very glad we did. Above the white horse, standing proud over the rolling Wiltshire hillside, is a fabulous art installation featuring 10ft-high silhouette ‘giants’ modelled on soldiers from
5 Rifles – which conducts military training on nearby Salisbury Plain.
Made in steel, these silhouettes stand alongside figures representing members of the public. Designed by the Standing With Giants charity, the artwork is to raise awareness of the MOD’s Respect The Range campaign. Last year alone saw thousands of incidents in which the public illegally accessed Defence training land, causing hundreds of ‘near misses’.
On the way back down from Bratton, I watch on with interest what resembles a clown car ahead, the Dyane’s rear end bobbing away merrily as we make our way to the next destination. It’s why we are heading to Sparkford via the excellent 2CV Shop in Warminster, where founder Darren Arthur kindly supplies James with a set of four replacement dampers. Then we head on into the setting sun and through the winding back roads of Wessex, bowling along happily as the sky turns to honey, in two cars that we love. James in his bouncy castle and me in my tatty Mazda. We couldn’t be happier. We are heading for a night’s rest before visiting another museum highlight, Haynes Motor Museum, where space has been allocated at the museum’s own dedicated workshop for James to fit his new dampers.
9X auto… what could have been.
Check out those prices!
Danny Hopkins Day 3: Haynes to RNAS Yeovilton
It’s a short hop from Sparkford to the museum, although worth noting that the Haynes Manual publishing house still lives on the industrial estate there and, this year, has started producing paper manuals again. For several years, since the publishing arm was sold to a separate company, Haynes Manuals became a digital only product, but now they are back in paper as well.
Tops down, or rolled back in James’s case, we leave Haynes and vow to return for its new classic show in September. The afternoon sunshine warms the soul as we hit the A303 for the short journey to the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton. As a pair of old aircraft nerds, James and I enter another heavenly hall.
If the words Phantom, Buccaneer, Harrier and Vixen mean anything to you then you must visit this place. Add to that Concorde – where James points out the bits his dad designed – and it’s a day out in itself. Which leaves the evening drive to the delightful Hornsbury Mill Hotel for our overnight stop. On the way we acquire cake from the Railway Carriage Café and traverse some of the most beautiful scenery the country has to offer. Neither of us want the day to end.
The white (and brown) horses of Westbury.
Respect the range installation.
Haynes workshop – James fits new dampers.
James Walshe Day 4: Chard to Taunton
Wafting through seemingly endless rolling hills of Somerset, you’ll find a love/hate relationship with the A303 – described as anything from a ‘highway to the sun’ to ‘an environmental disaster’. Whatever the case, we’re far to the west of the most controversial bit (the planned Stonehenge tunnel has been ditched) and we’re at its very end, where it joins – and becomes – that other ‘run to the sun’, the A30. I recall stories of holiday bottlenecks told by my parents and grandparents. Having left home at dawn in London, they’d spend an entire day stuck in traffic and would end up somewhere around here as night fell.
Danny and I dart enthusiastically down narrow winding lanes skirting the beautiful Blackdown Hills, down Blagdon Hill and into the Taunton metropolis. I haven’t been into town here for years, but it looks a little swankier than I recall.
The town centre appears to be quite lively and this is, in part, down to the establishment of a brand-new classic car related attraction. County Classics, like all the places we’ve visited on our trip, another brilliantly unique take on the motor museum. While I was sceptical of its busy central Taunton location, it turns out the key to the success of County Classics is just that. The museum has breathed new life into the area.
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