We arrived at Silverstone on the Friday morning to find the Yorkshire Centre camping area much improved over last year’s allocation. The weather was cloudy but warm and we looked forward to the whole weekend. This year’s event celebrated 75 years of the Car Club, 50 years of the MGA and 50 years of the BMC Competition Department, so there was plenty to go at.

Tent pitched, we went for a look around the static displays and the Trader’s area, some of whom were just setting up. The Pavilion display was impressive with the 2005 Le Mans LMP2 Class winning MG Lola EX264 taking centre stage and thronged by a special display of MGA’s and a display of BMC competition cars. The A’s featured ex works race cars and other famous examples. The BMC display featured MGs, Minis, Healeys, Triumphs, 1800s, Rover, Riley and a Marina.

Back at the camp site most of the other Friday visitors from Yorkshire had set up their tents and caravans and hotel guests David & Carol arrived to join our traditional Friday evening visit to the pub for our meal. Off we trekked to Silverstone village only to be hit by disaster – the Royal Oak was boarded up! Yorkshire Centre out all day and no food! David & Carol who had driven down to the village went on ahead to the other pub in the village, the White Swan on a scouting mission – find food! Their trip saved the day and eventually we all received sustenance in the Beer Garden of the very crowded pub.

The day dawned with clouds but still warm, OK, that would do.

Pete and Neil donned their orange overalls and went off early to sign on for their marshalling duties, returning to have breakfast with us before taking up their posts.

More Yorkshire folk arrived during the day and most went off to see the racing and all the static displays. The racing provided varied grids with races for Minis, Aston Martins, Thoroughbreds and Morgans. For us, it gave us the opportunity to see South Yorkshire Natter Leader Mike Breedon racing a V8 he shared with Joe Parrington in the two driver event in the day’s final race. Joe had put the car on pole during qualifying, but the race was over 28 laps and the car’s race fuel tank could only run for 16/17 laps. A re fuel then, during the driver change pit stop! Disadvantaged by losing more than a lap over the cars that could fuel for the full distance, Mike came out of the pits in fourth place after Joe had been leading from pole. Nevertheless Mike got stuck in and pushed the V8 to climb up to third place when the chequered flag came out, well done Mike!

More display cars arrived including many different BMC offerings swelling the crowds to larger numbers than we have had before.

In the Pavilion Paddy Hopkirk was on hand promoting his new biography and signing copies for those who purchased them.

For our usual camp site barbeque in the evening we were joined by Dieter and his wife from Germany who came over with their T type. Another guest was Alistair, an Australian adopted by the Yorkshire Centre for his 6 month visit. Alistair was accompanied by his wife, daughter and niece who watched him race his J2 during the day.

This day started cloudy and slowly turned to drizzle, oh well, it might blow over we thought, how wrong can you be? The wind got up, the rains came down.

The two Steves went off to do their Sprint and somewhere out there was Mark sprinting his Metro too. We don’t know their results yet, everyone was busy trying to get dry.

The huge potential shown the day before for achieving record crowds was thwarted and early in the afternoon many began leaving. The races were slowed considerably with the amount of water on the circuit and Traders got fed up with their stock getting a soaking.

For us, the Yorkshire Centre campers, we helped each other taking down tents in the rain and wind and had to change to dry clothing on our way out, after getting soaked to the skin.