My alarm was set for 6.30am again this Sunday (Two weeks running! What's that all about!) as I had another long Journey to make. My first port of call was to get to Colin Wake's house in Frating (Or Farting as I call it) just North of Colchester. My Triumph estate was finally ready for collection from Norfolk and we were using Colin's Landrover discovery and trailer to collect it, but we had another journey to make first.
So, I arrived at Colin's around 07.30 and with no fannying around, we got on the road straightaway. It was a dark morning and peeing down with rain, so the conditions weren't pleasant. Our journey took us down the A12, M25, M23 and A272 to our destination at Billingshurst in West Sussex. We were here to collect a Triumph Mk1 Pi from here and take it to where my Triumph estate was near East Dereham in Norfolk. Bit of a treck then!
After a quick cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich courtesy of our host, Richard Brake, we were on the road again. We had a choice of going either way around the M25, but a quick look at google maps showed that both ways were filled with solid traffic anyway! We opted for going clockwise, but met crawling traffic between the A3 and the M4 junctions. Undeterred we carried on in the rain and didn't stop until we turned off the M11 at junction nine. Here we had a quick coffee from the flasks we had brought with us and then I took over the driving for the remaining drive up to East Dereham.
The Christmas traffic had obviously already started, and the normally quiet Norfolk roads were quite busy. We didn't get held up though and we arrived at our destination around 3pm. The car we were delivering had no engine or gearbox so that had to be rolled off of the trailer and pushed into the workshop, but my estate was a 'driver', so that could be driven out of the workshop and up onto the trailer which made life easier.
With everything strapped down and secured Colin nominated me as driver again, so we set off as it was now getting dark. We had been blessed in the sense that the only times it had stopped raining so far, was when we were loading or unloading cars on or off of the trailer, but it started in earnest again now that we were leaving and it also got very dark, very quick. The route from East Dereham was the A47 to Norwich, around the Norwich ring road to take the A140 to Ipswich, and then the A14 and A12 back to Frating. The rain hammered down all the time and the visibility was a nightmare. It was still raining when we arrived at Colin's so he decided that the estate could stay on the trailer for the time being. I couldn't blame him! I still had to make the journey back to my place, so I didn't hang around. I had left my home at 6.45am that morning and by the time I got home it was 7.30 pm. It had been a good day though and I enjoyed spending time in Colin's company. All I've got to do now is clear some space at my place so that I can get the work done that's needed on the estate.
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