LC CLUB MAG WINTER 2010

THE SILVERSTONE CLASSIC EVENT
23-25 JULY 2010
Earlier during the year, Silverstone Circuit contacted our erstwhile leader Weaver
as they were inviting the club to take part in the Silverstone Classic. This was the
first time that the LC Club had been invited to this classic car event and we were
one of only two bike clubs to attend the other being the Harley Owners Club who
had a massive presence. After all, Harleys are the bikes that we all aspire to own
and run one day! (Jools, I didn’t realise Harley made a 350LC) This event has been
run for a number of years and is 100% car orientated and was previously known as
the Coys International Historic Festival.
With the re-branding of Silverstone as the premier UK based circuit for both car
and bike racing, I do believe that we were invited as a club due to the fact that the
club has been visible at the Classic Car & Bike Show at the NEC. It wasn’t long
before Weaver had posted the details of this event on the club forum and living
locally to the circuit, I expressed an early interest in attending. As the weekend
dawned upon us, Weaver asked me to co-ordinate the event in his absence. The club
trailer was delivered to my home in Brackley on 20 July. Subsequent communication
between us established that John Hay (Johnny 485 off the forum) would be able to
tow the trailer the 6 miles from Brackley to the circuit on his way up from Croydon
– no problem.
As the event was a Friday to Sunday event, John came up from Croydon on
Thursday afternoon to set up. Unfortunately, I was told earlier that I was unable
to have the Friday off but I met John at Silverstone on Thursday after work in the
pouring rain. This is where things started to go a bit tits-up. The organisation for
this event was a little dodgy to say the least. It started badly when we were given
free camping for our tents on a tarmac car-park! On Friday morning, the organisers
seemed to have forgotten to give us an actual plot and John spent around 3 hours
and drove about 20 miles around the circuit trying to find someone to tell us where
we were supposed to be. Eventually we were allocated a plot/stand beside the live
action events track and a pikey fair. (Horrible thoughts of the Ding-Ding Rally at
pikey central HQ of Billing Aquadrome of 2008 sprung to mind) We spent the
majority of Friday manning the club stand waiting for others to turn up. We had
our 2 bikes on display in the dustiest place you could imagine on the circuit.
The bikes were covered in dust and we were well away from the beaten track,
which was not a good thing. John and I weren’t best pleased but we soldiered on in
what can only be described as very inclement weather.
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