Over £200 Collected

The day at the carshow was great fun and I met loads of other Morris Minor owners who offered invaluable advice on pre journey maintenance and the spares that I should carry.

At these events I am always impressed by how friendly and generous people are- always happy to talk to the slightly weird hippy bloke in front of the rusty Morris! The radio and newspaper certainly helped as many people had heard about what we are doing and came over for a chat.

I am off work this week ( enjoying a few days at home with the girls and the puppy!) so I have had ample time to do a few jobs on the Morris and in preparation for our adventure.

First I fixed the boot catch which annoyingly would not close.

Then I went on line and ordered a boot full of spares including fan belts, fuses, rotor arms, plugs and a couple of condensers from separate sources as these seem to fail very regularly.

Finally today I got round to counting up the money in the collection tins. This was money collected at work, at Welford and Wickham Produce in the Park, Henwick Fields car show and at the race course on Saturday.

The grand total was £216 getting us very close to our £2k target so I hope with one last push we will achieve it before we set off. I am currently working with a colleague to sort out a sweepstake as to when and where we will break down or have a row which should raise a few extra pennies.

Only 14 days before we set off- I can't wait......Lynn can!

An exciting few days

Over the last few days things have really gathered pace. On Thursday my radio interview went out (although I missed it as I was in London) although they also covered it on their website.

http://www.newburysound.co.uk/couples-retro-charity-drive-i-6547.php


We also featured in the local newspaper the Newbury Weekly News ( see picture).

Yesterday I spent most of the day polishing the Ferrari and also spent a good hour or two on the Morris in preparation for the car show at Newbury.

The Morris scrubbed up quite nice and in the sun even her rusty chrome shone.

I decided to go to the car show in costume to try and raise a few extra pennies and I am writing this blog dressed as a hippy sat by the car and Newbury race course.

Assuming this posts OK then we will continue to update using my Vodafone data connection for the entire journey.

22 days and now all the family are involved

I can't believe I will be setting off on my trip in just 22 days. Things are really hotting up now in one final push to try and hit the £2k target before we leave.

Earlier this week I sent the photos and some press releases to the local Radio station Newbury sound and was delighted to do a radio interview earlier today.

So far I have not heard my 50 seconds of fame but I am looking forward to it and hope that people will log on to follow the blog and maybe come and see us at the race course this weekend.

I have also been working with WIN's PR team to develop a press release for use in the industry press so again hopefully this will bear fruit and we will see the total rise ever higher.

Finally as you can see I have also resulted to using our cute puppy Merlin to try and get some extra pennies! How could anyone say no to him?

Finally a Blog Update!

Quite a few people have taken me to task for my tardiness in updating the blog- I can promise you I have not been idle but I never get round to writing an update.

In the last few months I have been trying to use the Morris as much as possible and have been attending classic car shows so that I can shake my Help for Heroes tin and get some more sponsorship.

A few weeks ago I attended a show at Henwick fields in Thatcham. It was a fantastic little event and as ever the public were very interested in our little trip and extremely generous with advice and sponsorship.

On the way back from this event the car started to misbehave quite badly. She had been misfiring a bit for some time and despite checking all the leads etc. I could not find anything wrong.



On the 2 mile journey back from the show it got very touch and go with her lurching around and making the most disconcerting noises!

Fortunately quite recently I had read of a similar fault in Classic and Sports Car Magazine and the writer of that particular article (who also lives in Thatcham) got some good advice from the Thatcham Mini Centre and CJR.

I gave them a quick call and they confidently and correctly diagnosed it as a condenser fault. They told me it was an easy job and agreed to pop round and collect the car whilst also giving it the once over prior to the trip.

The car had one last hissy fit to throw- involving three enormous backfires and my close being filled with smoke- before the guys replaced the condenser and points and showed me what to do next time.

Best of all they generously only charged me for the parts (£10) so my 1960s car got fixed at 1960s prices!

Once the car was running again it allowed Lynn and I to partake in another piece of nonsense- taking some picture of us and the car in our 60s gear.



The plan is to use these with the local press release so not only readers of the blog can see me looking like a complete ass but so can the entire population of Newbury.

I have another show next week at Newbury race course and suggested to Lynn that we should do it in the outfits- she wasn’t keen but I will try and win her around because I really like the sensation of having hair again!

It’s less than a month before we set up so I promise I will do more updates- hopefully the local press will drive more interest and we will hit £2k before we leave!