A Personal View from Emma Jackman.......

Saturday morning dawned fine as I left for Belgium. The plan was do to a rolling meet at the Dartford Interchange, however this didn’t go quite according to plan. As I received the phone called from Dawn telling me the convoy were at the tolls of the Dartford Crossing, I left the garage where I had been waiting, did 3 laps of the interchange roundabout but could neither see nor hear the convoy. By the third lap I was getting dizzy and headed onto the M25 then onto the M20 heading for Dover. Not knowing exactly where they were, I decided to meet them at our next stop, Maidstone services. I was still convinced they were lagging behind me so was very surprised to see everyone waiting for me as I pulled into the car park!

On leaving Maidstone services, I narrowly managed to avoid being squished by a lorry when the slip road I was using turned out to be a lot shorter than I was expecting.

With a relatively simple route ahead of us along the M20 we could practice our convoy driving skills with minimal traffic. I also managed to re-new my membership to FEETAS (F-Extreme Exhaust Tunnel Appreciation Society - as detailed in SF’s Sweden report), as I travelled through one of the tunnels on our journey along with a TT Fxtreme behind and another Daytona in front of me. After checking in I got chatting to a couple of ZR lads who were queuing in the lane next to me, who were also heading for the continent with a fellow ZR driver. At this point I spotted a few more F’s appearing. Upon boarding we met up with most of the other F’ers and stood out on the deck enjoying an event-free crossing.

Before long we’d arrived at Dunkerque and after disembarking managed to re-arrange ourselves into our pre-determined groups. We set off on the short hop through France to Belgium where we were met by the MGF.be team, armed with rally plates, route books and a warm welcome. It’s great to see everyone again, and there are plenty of new faces (to me), with whom I am struggling to put names. So the 10 members of group 1, ably lead by Luc and kept in check by Bruce, set off across the flatlands of Belgium, along a combination of impossibly straight tree-lined avenues, twisty farm lanes and cobbled roads (which Envy didn’t like!)  

Now European driving is new to me, I’ve only done it once before and this is the first time in my car, on my own. However our hosts did a fantastic job of making sure we were coping and it turned out to be a very enjoyable drive, and despite the occasional cloudburst most of us kept the hoods down. Before long we’d arrived in the town of Ardooie and were directed to the reserved parking in the specially closed-off town square. The four groups merged into one as drivers and passengers made a bee-line of the nearest café, Bockor Café. We enjoyed Croque Garni (cheese toasties to the rest of us) whilst the F’s and TF’s kept the locals amused having invaded their town square. Within 15 minutes it had started to rain again, there was a mass exodus from the café as those of us who had left our hoods down ran outside to raise them. This was much to the amusement of the other F/TFer’s who had left the hoods up, and to the bewilderment of the café staff who thought we were all running out on the bill!

 After a quick walk around the square to take some photos, I returned to the cars. We regrouped and set off, this time bound for Mechelen and our overnight stop. As we travelled through the small town of Ooike, I saw a number of people standing in the road stopping traffic. Although I was fairly close to them I couldn’t see why they were preventing us from passing, until a huge herd of cows started being herded from one field, across the road and into the adjacent field. After a couple of minutes they’d all crossed, but we still weren’t moving. Then at last, a very old, bedraggled cow lumbered across the road in a very cartoon-like manner!
After this little escapade it was time for some motorway driving. Using the E40 and E19 we were soon making more progress.

Fortunately just before we joined the motorway I decided that I could no longer put up with the increasingly heavy rain and begrudgingly raised the hood at a set of lights. It was a good thing I did as once we reached the motorway the heavy rain turned to torrential. I must have learned something from the Sweden trip as I at least felt like I knew what I was doing despite visibility being minimal. Having the hood up with a plastic screen, and of course having the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car for European driving certainly posed a challenge. However we all made it through ok, I’ll chalk this one down to experience. I was relieved to see the sign for Mechelen, we exited the E19 motorway and found ourselves in the town centre. We turned into the underground car park within minutes. It was brand new and once the group 1 F/TF’s parked up, closely followed by group 2, it had started looking like a car showroom.

I headed for the Hotel Ve, where we were staying for the night. One of the stages for Maanrock was being set up for the rock concert as I checked into my room. The hotel was stunning, and specially decked out for MG nutters, with bits of F/TF, photographs, posters and other memorabilia throughout the place. Dinner was a 5 course meal (I think, I actually lost count of how many courses were served). Tony and his passenger had decided to try at least one of every type of Belgian beer, much to the amusement of myself and everyone on our table. Everyone seemed to be itching to get outside to Maanrock, so most of us headed outside at around 10pm. Maanrock was fantastic, a free rock concert set throughout Mechelen, I believe there were 3 stages, although I only found two. Particular favourite was a group called Kraak and Smack, I kid you not! I retired to bed at around 12.30am, bit of a lightweight compared to those who stayed up until 2am! My excuse was driving 209 miles most of which on the wrong side of the road.

On Sunday, we breakfasted, checked out and met in the car park to leave for 9:30am. Daphne announced that certain MGF.be members, our leaders, could not make it today as they were rather ill. Possibly due to too much alcohol the night before? I’m saying nothing! This left us with a distinct lack of leaders, so Daphne and Hajo decided to lead us in one monster convoy (38 cars!) to Kempenrit. A brave decision. A lot of us had walkie-talkies and for the first part we managed to keep together rather well.

With Daphne driving and Hajo relaying directions and details of junctions back to us we managed to stay together quite well until a set of traffic lights saw our group split into four sub-groups. Fortunately we managed to pull over and let everyone catch up. The residents came out of their homes looking fairly gob-smacked at this invasion, but we got plenty of waves as we re-grouped and left.

The second time we were split, we managed to pull into a car park. It was whilst I was waiting for the others that I heard about Mark Ward (blueroadster). He had only had a head gasket failure the previous week, which had been fixed. Unfortunately the car was left in a cloud of steam again, I later found out due to a coolant leak. This left him stranded in Belgium, but thanks to our European friends and breakdown cover, I heard he managed to get back to the ferry without too much hassle. Really bad luck and unfortunately this wasn’t the only piece of bad news, but I’ll come to this later.

We made it to MGF Kempenrit and after a slight queue, were directed to park in our colour groups. Envy, being a rather predictable BRG soon got lost in the sea of green F’s whilst I went to the nearest café to get a drink. This particular café had a fox-related theme, paintings everywhere, and also a rather fierce looking stuffed fox, strategically placed to scare people as they came out of the toilets.

Outside, there were a few ‘single’ colours including Bruno’s Volcano F, a Morello Purple, and 1 Trophy Yellow (I was expecting to see more than one of these). Strangely we had 2 Bittersweet TF’s who we managed to keep together for most of the trip who became known (to me at least) as the twins. Once again it was great to meet up with more friends from the continent, and I soon found myself chatting to Bruno about his stunning Volcano F.

A 60 mile road run had been organised, however I doubted my ability to do this alone. Although I can read a tulip road book well enough to do a road run by myself in the UK, doing this whilst driving on the wrong side of the road didn’t seem like a good idea. Adrian and Dawn got a group of mainly single drivers together and we decided to miss out on the road run and head straight for the finish point. Although I had the hood down for the most part toward the end of the journey when the rain started to come down in sheets, only three of us remained with the hoods down.

Ralph, Tony and myself seemed to have gotten ourselves into a battle of hoods. None of us wanted to be the first to raise theirs and it ended with Ralph and I raising the hoods just as we entered the car park at the finish point and Tony not doing so until he’d parked up. Once again I was thankful that I had an F with sponge-dry leather seats. The head-start given to me by cutting out the road run meant I could dust off my bag of regalia and with Tim and Liz’s help, set up a regalia table.

At this point a second wave of bad news hit us, that of Art and Christine’s accident. It really was a shock and the rest of the afternoon seemed quite sedate. However as the afternoon wore on I was pleased to hear that, although battered and shocked, both Art and Christine were OK, sadly the same couldn’t be said about their rare Dover White TF.

Dinner followed a short prize-giving ceremony, well done to James and Fiona for winning the furthest travelled prize. Over dinner I became aware that we had a 175 mile journey back to Dunkerque for our ferry, and as we ate, everyone became aware that we were running short on time. We had around 3 hours to complete the journey if we were to reach the ferry. In a flurry of goodbyes, and in true ‘Le Mans start’ style, we ran for the cars.

Kempenrit

MGF Register Run to Belgium organised by Adrian Clifford

Kempenrit Organisers - MG Car Club Antwerp

  Printed Reports - FasTForward Winter 2006, Spring 07

Thanks to the Hotel Ve. 

Photo acknowledgements

Tim & Liz Morris , Dave Alexander, Hakan Sigemark, Adrian Clifford, Hajo & Daphne Witzel