PAG 14, page 2

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'Number Sixteen Goes Foreign'

By Bill Avery


Back in the early part of the year, when I heard that Gary Shearing of the Citroen Specials Club was organising a trip to Luxembourg, it seemed like a good idea.  It did not seem so great as the departure date got nearer, but by then the honour (and my deposit) was at stake.
Thus it was that, ridiculously early one Thursday morning, luggage bungeed down to the new luggage rack (the boot was full of spares and tools) I left home in Shropshire, called for my navigator Nick, who lives in Much Wenlock, and headed off the 260 miles to Dover.
This brings me to the first of the trip's lessons:- If you are doing a long distance trip in a Pembleton, and particularly if you are doing it day after day for over a week, choose your companion more for their physical attributes rather than their qualities of mind, a retired jockey would be ideal.  Nick, whose figure is very much more Winne-the-Pooh than Twiggy was not a good choice, my left shoulder still aches from not being able to get my arm down in a comfortable position.
Once over the Channel, we met up with Peter and Beth Hill, motorwayed it to Cambrai, where we joined up with seven other cars and took a route to Luxembourg, which avoided motorways and dual carriageways.
We went out and about most days and there was no doubt that a gaggle of Citroen Specials really impressed (amused?) the locals. There was also no doubt that the star of the show was the Pembleton.
Wherever we stopped, I was asked what?, where? and how? And could they take a photograph?  I was only sorry that mine is rather basic and agricultural, and did not do the marque as much credit as one like Keith Bull's.
If I was not knocking seventy years of age, I would ask Phil for the continental sales rights, it would be like taking candy from a baby.  I will spare you the blow by blow description of the week, suffice to say that a good time was had by all, marred very slightly on a personal level by the fact that as you get older, you seem to get more timid.
I spent the beginning of the holiday worrying whether the car would get there, and the rest of the time worrying whether it would get back, needless to say it did. We covered 1500 miles with only a fractured number plate bracket and a carburettor coming loose in the time, what a car!  Number sixteen has now been to France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany, has it been where no other Pembleton has (grass) hopped before?

The finish and look of ones car is a very personal matter, Keith's is a very nice example, but yours is also a very good example on a different style, plus judging by the trip record,
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