Well onto things to take your minds off the rain. You may remember Sam Collins and I were doing a driving event at Brooklands, the home of motorsport, to raise money for the Anthony Nolan Trust last month. We had a great time and the people organising the event were extremely welcoming and Sam and I had a great day in good company, driving an assortment of large and not so large vehicles. We started out taking the cab of a 40 foot articulated lorry and doing a mini autotest in it.
We had to slalom round cones and then reverse park into a bay marked out by more cones. I went first (Gulp) with Sam sitting in the cab to watch how to drive properly by a lady trucker (me!). Actually we also had an HGV instructor with us giving us hints and tips on how to get the best out of his lorry. I was ahead on points by the end of this challenge.
Next we were led down the Brooklands runway to meet some of the TA Logistics Corps and a huge MMLC (Medium Mobility Load Carrier to those that don’t know). This truck, although shorter than the Artic had a 60 foot turning circle compared to the artic’s sixpence sized one. The TA lads and lassie
had also decided it would be fun if we loaded a long steel pallet full
of (empty) ammo boxes on to the back using the hydraulic hooking arm. This
was very tricky and involved a lot of multi tasking (something that women
do much better than men – you know the sort of thing applying lipstick
while driving at 90 MPH along the M25 etc! I must have smiled nicely
at the instructor as I got a perfect score, but Sam was catching up points
wise.
We had a break and then moved onto the blindfold car driving challenge. This was seriously weird. It really goes against one’s driver instincts to sit behind the wheel of a car (a brand new Toyota Corolla!) and not see where you are going. There were two parts to this challenge, as you and a partner took it in turns to drive and act as guide and we were scored on the way we listened to and gave out instructions. Naturally we chose partners of the same sex, as competition was tight and the men would probably cheat! It all went well for me and Sam, although he had an interesting moment when he got a bit close to a fence at the edge of the runway!
The final challenge was actually the hardest of the four and involved manoeuvring a double decker bus through a very complicated course of cones, pulling into a pretend lay-by and then reversing the whole
way
back through the course and into the “garage”! Phew! Although I did
better than Sam at this one, I will offer in his defence lads, that his
bus driver was not quite as helpful as the one I had. There Sam,
I admit it, are you happy?
We also had to complete a quiz on the Highway Code (Oh OH!) and I sadly let the side down ladies, by not actually keeping this wonderful book by my bed and reading it every night. Stopping distances? Well they haven’t taken into account modern ABS brakes and traction control have they? If they had, then my answer would have been right! (Pout! Pout!) Also got tyre tread depths a bit wrong too! I rely on the mechanic at the garage to let me know when my tyres get dodgy! However, even with all that nonsense, I (the woman) still managed to beat Sam (the man) by 4 points. Sadly overall the men won the day (not by much though), BUT a lady driver got the top driver award overall. So sense prevailed and over £5,000 was raised for charity. So come on you lot, if you pledged an amount, Sam and I need to see the colour of your money!
Other matters quickly— there is a plea for help with Spotted Dick for setting up and marshalling contained within, please respond generously everyone and let’s make this (probably) very last event ever at Longcross a successful one— another venue bites the dust in the South East!
I’m off to order my new MMLC complete with teamaker this time! Could be useful for our holiday gear! Aurevoir!