Classic adventures
Heritage, which holds regular ‘Scrambles’ every few months.
Virtually every time I’ve been on a car ferry to France I’ve seen a group of classic car owners or supercar drivers en route to an adventure.
And every year for the last 12 years, except during Covid, we and our friends from our dinghy sailing club have done the same.
I’m not sure what the connection is between sailing and old cars but a remarkable number of the members have old motors. We’ve done trips to
Wales, Suffolk, the New Forest, Bruges, the First World War sites on the Western Front in France, and to the Champagne region. This year it was Brittany and Normandy.
We used to have a classic Merc SL roadster but that went a few years ago, replaced by the Saab that’s already featured in these pages. Unfortunately, a week before this year’s trip the fuel pump conked out and there wasn’t time to fix it.
A favour was pulled from some mates at BMW UK and one of its heritage cars was offered – a stunning 1998 Z8. Under its bonnet is a 5.0-litre V8 from the then current M5 saloon and a manual gearbox. A wonderful machine.
The plan was to catch a Brittany Ferries overnight boat from Portsmouth to St Malo, tour for a couple of days seeing the sights, then return on the daytime ferry from Caen to Portsmouth. A hotel was booked in the beautiful town of Dinard and we were good to go.
We made an interesting convoy. A couple of MGBs, three Morgans, a Jaguar XK8 and a Mazda MX-5. We’re not snobs, so a 20-year-old Vauxhall Astra estate made up the numbers, its owner arguing that it was old enough to at least be a modern classic.
My BMW Z8 was probably worth considerably more than all the other cars added together.
We visited several sights including Mont St Michel, St Malo itself, a famous lighthouse and the Bayeux Tapestry. But the real joy, aside from the sights, the company and the wine and food, were the traffic-free French roads.
Those of you lucky enough to live in Scotland are used to quiet roads, but if you live in the South East of England the N and D roads in France lift the spirits. Roads on which you can still enjoy driving.
For 2024 we already have a plan: we’re heading across the Channel again, this time to the Netherlands. The Saab is fighting fit and tickets for the tunnel have been bought.