[pjs]

Hi Guys (and Gals) , hope you all get home safely today. Thanks to Gav and Matt for a well researched and well organised meet, and to everyone who made the effort to make it a success, especially the 'new guys'. A few pics below that capture the 'essence' of the driving, I might stick some more up later. Despite my car getting on in years, being auto and unmodded, I'm pleased it managed to raise a few eyebrows with it's sound and pace! Less so the fact I now need new brake pads front and rear. A great curry house was later combined with Viv making a kind of virtual appearance which was kinda strange..

[- Paul -]

Quickie stop

[MEGA]

Lovely rolling pics paul. Mine to follow: Along with a quick write-up (and ordering two new tyres .... )

[RockIt]

A fantastic weekend! We really enjoyed ourselves and it was great to meet up with familiar faces, long standing members who we had not met before and new faces. Good driving, good food and lots of laughs, with some cracking driving over some of the most interesting roads in Yorkshire!

Thanks to everyone who attended for making it such a good meet and particularly to those who travelled from the south. Also thanks to Matt for doing the bulk of the organising...and for providing Friday evening's entertainment in the pub! Top complaining! We have a few photos that I'll try and get sorted later.

[MEGA]

Soo...

This is easilly the furthest I've travelled for a meet: 240 miles each way. Car registered over 600 miles in total for the meet (and an mpg of 34 ).

Picking up a puncture the night before the meet was far from ideal and even though I filled her up on the way up there by the following morning the car was back down to 12psi! FORTUNATELY Ed had a compressor with him which really saved my arse and saved me having to try and limp the car on the runflat blocks around to a garage, and who knows what damage that would have caused So well done for saving us there! Having checked the pressure twice more over the course of the day for whatever reason the leak seems to have slowed and it didn't impact my enjoyment of the drive. So phew.

On to the drive itself and it was a great run over some beautiful scenery.. And the drive up to the inn and beyond back down to Richmond was just stunning. It was a shame about the weather but I don't feel it slowed us down too much to be fair: Much faster and someone would have had an off due to the hidden dips in the road!

So on to my "airtime". Yes it was close !!!! Matt went over it and the car looked pretty unstable on landing. It was at this point that I realised, going over it as I was about 20mph faster as I'd been trying to push Matt along somewhat beforehand (sorry about that.. ): Was going to find this fun. Too late to brake as the car was already floating and weightless (not wanting to risk re-pointing the car as only the driving wheels had any purchase at this point .. ) I just had to go for it and brace!
Left wheel hit the deck first and had to apply an armfull of opposite as it immediately tried to swerve off into the drystone wall. Eep. Straightened it up, booted it and all OK.

No damage to the front bumper either which is always a bonus

So having been the first (but not the last !!!! The same stretch and one later caught a couple of others by all accounts!) to "hang 10" at this meet I feel a strange sense of pride. I'll try not to make a habit of it mind.

Aside from the driving: All the food was superb (well chosen gents), it was very well organised: And the evenings were a great laugh. Preying for Andy the friendly-but-clearly-left-behind-by-technology to come back and serve Gav, Rob, Andy and I Absynth and Whiskey at 2am was probably in retrospect a bad move. I did suffer thismorning !!!

Not as badly as Matt and Sean on the first evening though. Eh gents

All in all a very good meet and whilst I'm knackered after the drive home now am glad I came up. Just remember that alot of us southern fairies did 200 miles plus to grace you with our company chaps and Gav, Rog etc we do expect you to represent the North for UK11/GM3 or whatever the next one is

Few pics here.. Not too many unfortunately!! But unlike paul who's prepared to fly sideways out of every junction one-handed whilst hanging a camera out of the window: We were struggling to get the shots whilst pressing on so don't have too many rolling ones.

Cheers gents, and last of all just to say nice that so many brought their other halves along this time! I remember a couple of meets back it being just me and Sean who brought our SO's with us and I do think it made the evenings that much more enjoyable us having a good mix of people present.

Roll on the next one. As said few of my pics below..

































































Cheers all!
Dave

[ed335d]

A great meet - many thanks to Matt & Gav for organising everything so well.

We had some epic driving roads (even if one was a dead end ) and the weather didn't put too much of a damper on things.

Great to see some new faces (as well as some rather old ones )

[seanblee]

It was great to catch up with everyone again, and to meet some new people. Many thanks to Matt and Gav for arranging everything - it definitely lived up to the usual high e90post meet standards!

Oh, and my MPG on the drives to and from the meet was over 32, but for the driving on the Saturday was 20 - I need to try and get it in the teens next time

[dxb335d]

Great pics guys, looks like it was fun!

[rogerxp]

My half-hearted efforts...

[Palmnuts]

Looks like a great weekend chaps with some fantastic looking roads....gutted I missed it but even if I did come, I wouldn't have had a suitable car anyway (expect an update in O/T over the next week or so)

[wheelie good]

Yer come to think of it the three best things were:-

Matt nipping into the garden centre for that last half-price flymo
The dead end turnaround jobbo
And all them fast cars getting stopped in tracks by a chap doing a U-turn in a bloody truck

[rogerxp]

Got a little more time now to contribute properly to this thread.

As has already been said, the event was very well organised by Matt & Gav, so hats off to them. They'd researched the venues & 'road-trip' and everything ran smoothly (apart from the dead-end but in fairness that was a spur of the moment addition).

A really good group of people attended and everyone got on with one another in a relaxed nature and had a good laugh throughout.

Watching the faces of the local folk was amusing as a long string of Beemers passed through their sleepy villages. Their faces looked even more puzzled as they wondered what the feck a Datsun was doing in the middle of them .

Paul (PJS) must have one of the fastest and loudest 'stock' 335i's ever - you do drive like a nutter mate (obviously due to being 'advanced'!!!)
Paul's (-Paul-) 645i certain showed its no cruising slouch and sounded great on full throttle. Looked great with those wheels too
Matt's mini was a real surprise, looked great in its fancy JCW clothes, and stuck to the road like glue - I've never heard an exhaust pop so much
Gav's TT looked great and I'm sure you were thankful of the extra traction at some times
Richard's 335 did a fine job considering you only had half of the turbo's the other 335's had and your car looks great too, very nicely modded - good luck getting things sorted
Dave's motor looked the part on those lovely alloys; shame about the slow-puncture though but can't say I noticed any lack of 'go'
Ed's M3 won the award for noisest motor I think with his exhaust recently refitted but boy did it sound good (just ask the sheep!!)
Sean, pleasure to meet you, you certainly weren't put of by the wet corners, my eyebrows were raised more than once following you and realised I had to do the same shortly afterwards
Lars - I enjoyed chatting about your modified car even though most of it went over my head - summary being you're very friendly with Kev at Birds and have a damn sight more knowledge of the workings of cars than me (not difficult)
Ant - shame you had to dash off early, probably wise before you stuffed up any more springs, getting all four wheels off the ground probably doesn't help
Matt - your motor is coming along nicely and I particularily liked the extra clownage badges on the back
Mark - the self-confessed 'captain-slow' who made us all take a deep breath during your double-overtake move - you claim it wasn't so bad from behind the wheel but we were panicking slightly watching from behind

As for the Zed, performed faultlessly the whole weekend, and managed the whole trip on a single tank (fuel light now on). Had a great drive and even the rain didn't throw its composure off one bit (my bottle went long before the car struggled). Only one hairly moment when a very wet hairpin suddenly approached with a large drop if I missed it but it shed it's speed as requested. Oh, also, when sheep-watching, I misjudged one of the dips and virtually took off (not a problem) but bottomed out big time when hitting the deck - my front end was too low for a lot of the dips so was constantly scraping my front aero flaps (used to that as they hit speedbumps all the time anyway). Just a shame the rain didn't ease as I only managed one circuit around the green outside the pub with the top down - was quickly raised though.

I must admin to being impressed by the WAGS, my missus would have kittens being driven around like that, but you lot loved it, so hats off to you. My wife did mention she'd 'consider' coming along next time but only if there was a spa she could go to whilst we tear-arse it around the countryside - not exactly getting into the spirit of things

Apologies if I've missed anyone off but was a pleasure to meet you all and hope to see you again soon.

[wheelie good]

hmm slow, I would have settled for "moderately fast", it must be them damn Bridgestone run-flat tyres

[rogerxp]

Originally Posted by wheelie good

hmm slow, I would have settled for "moderately fast", it must be them damn Bridgestone run-flat tyres

To be fair, I'd accept that, don't think anyone could be pigeon-holed 'slow' from the weekend .

[MEGA]

Originally Posted by wheelie good

hmm slow, I would have settled for "moderately fast", it must be them damn Bridgestone run-flat tyres

I was on the standard runflats too, and had a puncture

[MEGA]

Originally Posted by rogerxp

To be fair, I'd accept that, don't think anyone could be pigeon-holed 'slow' from the weekend .

Except possibly Ant after his missus ordered him to slow down (Cheers for letting me pass fella. The drive to catch back up with everyone else after I passed you was actually the most fun drive I had the whole meet I think )

[ant1985]

ye i could see you wanted to go, i had to stop twice over that last bit as she was throwing up. not good !

then she slept the 45 mins back from scotch corner.

[rogerxp]

Was that due to your driving or the alcohol the previous night Ant??

[ant1985]

not the drink pal,

the driving wont have helped, she doesnt do well at travelling, and the sort of roads didnt help.

[MEGA]

Ouch that sounds horrible sorry to hear that matey! I knew she was feeling rough but didn't realise she was actually being sick etc !

Yes I did want to go But would never have tried to push you off the road etc. So really appreciate you letting me by.

That's the prob with these meets for some of the WAGs hah.. The evenings are enjoyable for all but the driving not everyone. Next time we'll have to pick a spa, leave those who don't want the drive there in a jacuzzi or something and meet back up to get plastered in the evening

Naomi is one of the best actually at just letting me get on with it. She has more faith in my driving than I do I think !! (Probably as when she sees me apply opposite lock she doesn't realise how close we were to flying off the side of the buttertubs pass. It's good that I never react to incidents like that so she thinks it was intentional.. eeeeeeeeek hah)

[rogerxp]

My missus would be one for a Spa definately, she'd have shit herself on the drive on Saturday (in fact, just pulling out of the hotel carpark trying to catch PJS would have finished her off!!), reckon we'd get Mrs TMP out too as I don't think she relished the driving at a previous meet by all accounts. Shall we start a poll...

For the Spa...
Mrs rogerxp
Mrs TMP
Mrs Ant1985
...

This is starting to sound expensive

[ant1985]

lol ye sounds expensive !


she enjoyed it but doesnt do travell round uneven and wiggly roads. so its about as much fun when were on holiday going fro mthe airport to the hotel. normally she takes some travel pills and just ends up sleeping or totally mong'd out.