Paddock Wood, Kent
7th June 2004
| VW Expo Show Paddock Wood, Kent |
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| It was 10am and Tris & I were running late, as usual! We arrived at the Halfway House to find Dave and his black mk3, Paul & his girlfriend in his mk4, Justin with Betty, Gary (a newbie to J29) in his red mk3 and another unknown man (sorry, didn’t get your name!) and his ‘rado waiting for us. We weren’t that late, as we’d arranged to meet between 10 and 10.30… but we were the last to arrive… | |
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| The convoy departed from the pub in fine form, with my loop leading the way (Tris & I had been to the Paddock Wood the night before, so knew where we were headed). Tris spent the majority of the journey leaning out the window taking photos of the rest of the convoy. We almost missed the turn off (it looked different in the dark, honest!) and thankfully we avoided the huge traffic jam up ahead. | |
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| On arrival at the Hop Farm, I headed over to the Club Lupo and Dub-Club stand, where my car took its place in the line up. Gary & Dave also followed and parked up behind the line up. A couple of minutes later, we were joined by John & Dave (of Team Guru fame) in John’s Bora V6 4motion. Meanwhile, Justin & Paul had been talked into Show & Shine by the guy on the gate and were frantically tidying up their cars! | |
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| We wandered over to the Show & Shine arena & caught up with Justin & Paul as the judge arrived to inspect their cars… Paul did his best to point out all the flaws in Justin’s cars (which there are very few, I hasten to add) and also pointing out he has bigger wheels! Justin then took the tactic of showing the judge his chromed manifold that was sitting in the boot, waiting to be fitted. The judge found all the competitive spirit most amusing! At the end of the afternoon (about an hour later than anticipated) the Show & Shine results were announced, and to his complete surprise, Paul won a trophy! | |
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The show was a small, really relaxed event but managed to a accommodate a fair number of both water and air-cooled auto jumble stands. The availability of food was restricted with just one food van to feed us all but most people didn’t seem to mind queuing for a couple of minutes. The Show & Shine was up the usual high standards, with some pretty amazing cars on display. |
| Words by Nicki, pictures by Tris. | |