531 miles in 16 hrs

What a day! It took significantly longer than we had anticipated to get to Carlisle and we finally arrived at 11.30 pm.

So why did it take so long?

Firstly the route we chose was all A roads that had not been converted to Motorways, as far as I can see this means that a B road has been upgraded to an A.

We particularly lots a lot of time as we drove through the Exmoor national park around Lynmouth. The roads (which were apparently A roads) were extremely windy with lots of 180 degree hair pin turns and in some cases gradients of 25 %.

This has two effects on the car- going up it meant that we rarely got out of second gear and going down it cooked the brakes. The smell of burning drum brake was worrying and the fade was extremely scary- we took a bit of a video which we will try and upload from the Iphone.

Secondly we picked the peak time for driving tractors and caravans around- in some cases we spent hours behind tractors that would not pull over on roads where the powerful 1098 cc engine in the Morris could not zip past them.

Around 2pm we got to Bristol and were introduced to a whole new hazard- the bike chain ninja! I kid you not on the side of the A 39 to Gloucester we came across a man wearing a security guards crash helmet with neck pads and body armour wielding a motor cycle chain like a nunchuk and leaping up in the air to put in the killer strike on the lamp post that was attaching him. What a fruitcake! Fortunately the doors were locked as they kept popping open so we just ignored him and kept driving.

At Ludlow we did a quick tot up of the miles we had done and realised we had about 200 more to do- mainly because I had added up the mileage wrong when calculating the stop overs. Fortunately my wife is very understanding and we did not argue- we just got on with the driving.

However as it go darker and the rain got harder it became almost impossible to drive down the windy A roads so we took the decision to cheat a little bit and join the old A6 on the 1960s map- which has subsequently become the M6.

We carried on tanking along at about 55 miles an hour and finally pulled into our hotel at 11.30.

The real hero out of all of this was the car- she had happily trundled along for nearly 16 hours with no real brake and when I checked her fluids this morning the only thing she had consumed was petrol.

We did learn last night that the windscreen leaks a bit, and that the lights are not very bright, and that the back light on the speedy only works intermittently but mechanically she has been fine.

I got up at 7am this morning and went to check her over as when we pulled into the hotel last night the indicators weren't working. The reason I discovered was because with lights and wipers going full bore for about 5 hours we had flattened the battery.

On a lesser modern car this may have been a problem but on Cowley's finest all I need to do was connect the little red starting handle- give it one turn and she roared into life!

I checked the terminals on the dynamo and the fan belt and all seemed OK and 15 minutes of ticking over later there was sufficinet charge in the battery to start her with the starter motor.

What a wicked car. We hit the highlands today so hopefully we will get some good pictures, we completely missed the lake district as it was pitch black when we passed through.

I suspect we may encounter gradients worse then 25% but I am sure the little car will manage beautifully.