Stanford Hall – Lutterworth, Leicestershire

Sitting a mere stones throw from the M1, Stanford Hall is an impressive country house situated in a picturesque country estate with a river running through the grounds that runs along side the concours field and club display stands.

Following the success of the previous two years we again decided to attend Stanford Hall and have a 10-car display stand for the region. As in the past, Mark Blake did a great job in organising the booking and arranging the meet at Leicester Forest East services for the run down the M1 to junction 20 and for the first time in many years the Club merchandising stand attended under the management of Matt Holt.

The regional display cars assembled at 08:15 minus Darren Marshall who was valiantly fighting with an early morning water leak on his stunningly original MkI GTI in an effort to meet Marks demand that we should have at least one classic MkI on the stand! I know why Darren was so eager to please Mark – he frightens the life out me too…

Meanwhile I was flying down the M1 completely stressed out that my weeks of preparation on my MkII GTI for the Concours competition had been wiped out by the weather. I was woken in the night by a terrific thunderstorm that splashed dirt and grit all up my car on the drive. I washed this off before leaving and then when we got on the road I then had to drive through heavy spray, as the roads were soaked. As if this wasn’t enough when we arrived at the grounds the road to the Concours arena was a sea of mud. After crawling a quarter of a mile in first gear to avoid unnecessary soiling (steady Mark…) we parked up on our allocated pitch and found that I now had four balloon mud tyres! Numerous runs to the river for buckets of water to throw at the wheels were then frantically made while Rach showed true devotion by getting on her hands and knees (steady Mark…) and cleaned the tyre treads with sticks. Two hours later the car was finally ready for judging.

Back with the regional display convoy, the lads had an uneventful run down and headed to take the usual pitch by the waterfall/lake. Unfortunately a trader had decided that his pitch was not big enough for his stock and ‘expanded’ onto ours. After arguing the toss with the guy to no avail, Mark tried his luck with the event organisers and although they would not move the trader (personally I would have moved him into the lake if he had spoken to me like that…) they offered an alternative plot in the middle of the field that gave us loads of room all around the cars and really good exposure for the stand – result! The lads then set about cleaning their cars and putting on a stunning display as they always do.

The organisers announced a new record trade attendance this year and I can well believe it as when I finally got away to have a good rummage I was spoilt for choice. And as surprising as this may seem I got a real bargain in the shape of a brand new, boxed Estoril alloy to make my set of five.

There were some interesting cars in the 'for sale' section and I had to drag Rach away from a K-reg Rivage Cabrio that was nice – just not £4500 nice!

The time really flew and it was soon time to judge the regional stand cars to select a best turned out motor. I really did have my work cut out and finally narrowed it down to three with Darren Marshall’s MkI GTI taking the award and deservedly so!

I came 4 th in the GTI class with 119 points out of 140, a result I was well pleased with as the car was on its maiden competitive outing. Amongst the things that let it down and will soon be addressed were ‘rusty wheel nuts’ – yes Stanford Hall really is the top of the pile when it comes to Concours.

So to sum up, another brilliant year for this event that is a firm favourite on the region’s calendar and yet another fantastic turn out by the regional members – well done!

Regional Host