Had another splendid weekend, this time with The Rolls Royce Enthusiasts Club, which contrary to it’s name is a club which caters for Rolls Royce and Bentley at their Concours weekend at Burghley House.

What a fabulous house, the photo doesn’t do it justice, it really is stunning. Unlike the Holiday Inn Express where we stayed the night before the event, however we did go to the dinner in the evening and met some very pleasant and friendly people and had a jolly good dance, which made the wife a very happy woman as she loves to dance, I’m quite partial to a bit of a jig about myself.

The concours itself was extremely well organised with all the cars of certain eras and models displayed together, there was even an enclosure for those of use who attended who were members of the Bentley Drivers Club.

The following will be some of the very special cars that attended and won prizes, one of which belongs to friends of ours who we meet every year at Goodwood Revival, it’s a red one!

The black car on the left used to belong to Field Martial Montgomery.

You were falling over Silver Ghost motor cars.

Now for a word of warning and the drive home during which we sustained a puncture, luckily in the nearside rear tyre, I’m very glad it wasn’t a front tyre and our speed was not too excessive. Coming back down the A1 a duel carriageway road with no hard shoulder the rear tyre suddenly deflated, quite a surprise. We managed to limp to a lay-bye some 50 yards down the road with massive articulated lorries shooting by at phenomenal speed, to be honest it was probably 50 to 60 mph but when you’re crawling down the road at walking pace it seems a damn sight faster. Having jacked the car up a friend of ours came along and seeing our peril stopped to assist, which was just as well as he mentioned that the nuts on the nearside wheels have reverse threads. I thought they were bloody hard to undo!  With the useful information about the reverse threads we soon changed the wheel and were on our way home, thank you Steve.

That covers the drive home, now the word of warning concerning the use of “modern radial” tyres. Having driven up to Longstone tyres today to get a new tyre they informed me that the latest thinking on tyre pressures is to increase the pressure quite considerably from that recommended with the old cross plies. I knew you had to increase the pressures and had been running mine at 30, I think the old pressures were 25 and 28 but they recommended putting the pressure up to at least 36, if not 38 all round. It seems that it may have been running with the pressures too low may have contributed to the failure of my tube.

Well that’s my latest blog, I hope you found it both interesting and educational.

Finally, I nearly forgot, we were so impressed with the organisation and the friendliness of everyone we met, that we joined the club