PAG 27, page 4
After lunch, back at the mill, the Hornet enters the story again and as a result I am now able to reveal, exclusively, the initial results of the preliminary trials for the soon-to-be-announced Pembleton motocross championship. Tudor has a paddock with his mill, which he usually attacks with a quad bike while his kids have child-sized scramblers to do circuits on. The field is broadly flat with a couple of ridges and grassed. Well, out came the quad bike. I’d heard too many stories about how unstable these things were and didn’t want to look a complete idiot pottering around white-knuckled at 5 mph so I held back, and I’m not the only one. But I thought about it. I concluded that, as we were deep in the fens all the surrounding land would be reclaimed without a rock in it. So there would be nothing to crack the sump; the capacitor might be vulnerable but I had a spare; Tudor had a good workshop in case of disaster hmmm…So the Hornet went scrambling. On road tyres it was very easy to get it washing out and off line but it was controllable and enormous safe fun. I think I got it into 3rd a few times. That led to a queue forming. Several folk had a go and seemed to enjoy themselves, then the inevitable happened; the car stopped dead (conveniently by the gate) and smoke was noticed coming from the wiring. The battery terminal was wrenched off quickly and a detailed inspection revealed that the main feed from the alternator (mounted high in place of the petrol pump on the Hornet) had bounced up, melted and stuck to the balance pipe, then carried on melting until it shorted out. The weekend was more or less over anyway, by now, so after being reassured that Tudor and I would be able to sort the Hornet the rest of the crew headed off to their various destinations. We soldered up a replacement lead from household earth wire which, I’m ashamed to say, is still in place 3 months later, and I packed up to leave.
All this fun and games meant that I headed off into the west with perhaps an hour of daylight left; I don’t enjoy night driving at all and would have preferred to get as much of the journey as possible done in the light. Still, needs must, and it was entirely self-inflicted after all. Having come so much further north my return route differed from the outward run to Cambridge. I still planned to pass close to my parents in Bucks. as I was tired after a heavy weekend, there was foul weather forecast and I wanted to keep the option of breaking the journey if I really didn’t think I could cope. So I headed south west across the Fens to pick up the A1(m) going south. At first it was pleasant enough, if cold, with blue skies and fast moving skeins of fluffy cloud. That gave way to night, starry, chilly now, but I bowled along nicely, joined the A1(M) and headed south. But then, Disaster! Near St. Neots I hit a huge and tiresome queue; I had no idea what it was in aid of and there was no sign of the front. I sat in the Hornet and inspected my map by the headlights of the following car which caused some amusement in the surrounding vehicles; this is not the first time I’ve wanted some sort of map-reading light in the Hornet. I think what I need is a little lead/inspection light so that it could be used for night breakdowns as well. Either that or I could add a torch to my travelling spares kit. I could see no real alternative to sticking with the traffic although it did give me the chance to work out signposts and turnings for the stage of the route from A1(M) to M25 (there’s a corner worth cutting off)
Eventually we arrived at the roadworks causing the problem and it turned out to be the famous ‘Black Cat’ roundabout, famed in radio traffic reports. I wouldn’t bother if I were you. I’d guess I lost a good ¾ hour there, which turned out to be crucial later. Afterwards, of course, the traffic, held back by the Black Cat behind me was light and the journey returned to its previous clocking-up-the-miles-with-ease style. I rounded the M25 and picked up the M4, deciding that I was in good enough state to press on for Somerset. Why, it was even getting warmer.
Now, I mentioned earlier that heavy rain was forcast. Well the reason it had got warmer was because I was
approaching a warm front of rain. It tipped down. I did the last hour’s driving through a steady cloudburst. Water crept into every seam of my waterproofs and the my goggles got saturated. Furthermore I hadn’t done anything to stop my goggles steaming over so I spent much of the journey peering through fog or with my goggles raised wincing as the rain hit my eyes. The last hour of the trip seemed to take 3 times that; one of those miserable endurance tests, made worse by the thought that if I’d avoided the dreaded Black Cat I’d have been most of the way home before the rain struck. I got home about 11 o’clock, sodden. Despite the last bit I’d had an excellent weekend and, once again, the Hornet had demonstrated it’s capability as a long-distance tourer.
It took a week for the padding of my goggles to dry out though.