Old Warden Vintage Vehicle Day

The Shuttleworth collection at Old Warden is always worth a visit.  This event  gathered together lots of classic cars and bikes at this historic old airfield.  Neil Diggens (Herts. & Beds. section) co-ordinated the Vincent side of this event to get a free entry for all the Vincent owners who wanted to take part.  The last time I went to the Shuttleworth Collection I was on a club run and we had a very wet ride to Bedfordshire.  No problem with rain this time as we were experiencing the hottest weekend of the year.  I had plotted the route on my computer and loaded into my GPS on Friday evening. We intended to get there at around 10.00 am and allowing about two hours for the trip Gloria and I set off at around 8.00 am on Saturday morning.  The first part of the route was on fast roads.  The second part skirted around Bedford on a very nice rural route, burbling through little villages on leafy lanes with hedgerows full of May blossom. Suddenly and much to my surprise a wooden fingerpost declared "Old Warden 4 miles".  Soon after we were riding into Old Warden Park having arrived ahead of schedule at 9.30 am.  There were already several Bikes there and soon the bike parking area was filled with great variety of classic bikes.  There were lots of Vincent-HRD machines there.  I lost count but Neil said there were at least 37.  Other makes were well represented including 6 Scott's, lots of the more usual BSA's and Triumph's and some quite rare machines such as  a vintage Omega and a nice horizontal cylinder Guzzi single.  I would guess that there were probably 150-200 bikes lined up outside the hangers.  There were also a few three-wheelers including John and Judith in their BSA car. The field to the side of the hangers had many types of classic cars, Austin, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar, Jenson, Jowett, you get  the idea; too many marques to mention but certainly something for all tastes.  There was even an immaculate Sentinel steam wagon painted in bright orange that was spookily quiet as it drove past.  The old aircraft in the hangers are always worth a look and although it wasn't a "flying day" there were visiting planes landing and taking off on the grass strip.  Two bi-planes landed, a Tiger Moth and a Jackaroo which is a Tiger Moth converted to have a four seat closed cabin.  When the pilot got out of the Jackaroo we spotted that it was Ken Broomfield along with friend and passenger Charlie.  Ken is well known to many Coventry section members.  Another interesting aircraft was an eastern block built Yak.  The 9 cylinder radial engine sounded great when he took off and he came back and did a few turns over the runway before disappearing over the horizon.
We used another rural route to go home once again avoiding Bedford but this time passing north of Northampton through picturesque Brixworth and coincidentally using some of the same roads travelled on last year's Navigation Trial.
Eddy.

The bike parking area beginning to fill up.

The Sentinel steam wagon.

John Lycett (left) Charlie (centre) and Ken Broomfield (right) in front of Ken's Jackaroo.  

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