Tour of Bristol

For more information or to book yourself in please contact Dave Goodfield 07816 137139

Sunday 5th February 2012
9.30am at McDonalds, Yate
First car off 10am
£3.50 per car

All makes and models welcome
You do not have to drive a Mini

This year the Christmas Meal is being held at The Folly at Emersons Green

A full menu is available here

Yes it is that time of year where Christmas is well and truly in the shops and we haven’t even had Halloween yet!!! I even heard a Christmas song on the radio a couple of weeks ago!!!

For those of you who have not heard, this years Christmas meal is taking place at The Folly, Emersons Green, Bristol, on Saturday 17th December, 7:30pm for 8pm sit down.

This year we have changed the location as well as the set up of the evening. We will not be doing the usual awards but instead a secret santa and a quiz.

The price for the evening will be £20.00, this includes a 3 course meal (menu included), 10 bottles of wine on the tables and a quiz with a prize for the 3 highest scorers!! The quiz will be for you to do individually, as a couple or as a group, your answers will be collected in after the main course and marked and prizes awarded after your sweet.

We will also be doing a Secret Santa, everyone attending will have their name put in to a hat they will be drawn at random, you will be advised who you are buying for by 20th November, all you need to do is buy a small pressie to the value of £3.00, wrap it up and bring it along to the Christmas meal when they will be handed out.

A £5 deposit and your menu choices are required by Sunday 30th October, with the full amount payable by Sunday 27th November, please contact myself or see me on club nights.

We will be doing our usual Christmas raffle so please bring along some prizes, wrapped up, tickets will be £1.00 per strip donation to The Children’s Hospice South West.

Any additional funds made during the evening will be donated to CHSW.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Rachel Townsend

EDIT 17/10/2011: Updated to reflect recent flyer.

As most of you who have attended shows like Castle Combe you will be aware that we have display boards where you can show off your mini, hopefully more of you will be aware that we also have a section for members car profiles on this website.

Our display boards are very out of date therefore we are trying to push to get these updated before Castle Combe, as you can imagine we have our work cut out so would appreciate your help and support on this.

The new profile can be downloaded here.

If you would like your ‘Mini’ profile on the club display boards and on this website then please complete at your earliest convenience and email it to myself (all details are on the profile itself).

Thanks, Rachel (07737 032848)

An invitation to the Honorary President and all Club Members to attend the:

Six-Ex Mini Owners Club
16th Annual General Meeting

The Agenda

1. Apologies for absence

2. The Chairman’s opening remarks

3. The Chairman’s report

4. The Treasurer’s report and financial review

5. Acceptance of the minutes from the 15th AGM held Sunday 26th September, 2010

6. Review of actions resulting from the last AGM

7. Elections of Committee and Club officials

Chairperson
Secretary
Treasurer
Event Co-ordinator
Social Member
……………………
Magazine Editor
Web Master
Membership

8. Items for open discussion
Review of club and social events, suggestions for future occasions
Subscription charges
Christmas meal, location and bookings

9. Charitable donations – nominations

10. Any other business

11. Date and venue for the 17th AGM

Not much news for this edition of the events list – see later explanation. Various meetings and events have taken place recently:

Bristiol Mini Day – wet. IMM Switzerland – attended by Nick. Mini Cooper Register day at Beaulieu – wet, despite that, very well attended, Len collected a Stag en route, the 4 legged kind and got a few dents to the front of his Mini*. Shakespeare Live – car parking made easy, well, compared to the old place – thanks to all concerned for attending. Gaydon – dry, another good MCR show. I had a Cousin’s reunion on the Atwell weekend, so couldn’t unfortunately attend, Lin informs it was a really great day. Mini and VW show at Cornbury Park was not very good according to Nick.

My Mini has now got a cover over it and been moved to the Wallops. I’m moving house in September (all going well) and needed room in the garage to start sorting 40 years of accumulated………..

Hence the sparse reports this month, at present I am spending my days sorting out the house. I am at that stage when I cannot see, despite hours of work, any real progress – just sorting out family photographs is a mammoth task!!

And on behalf of the Club a big thank you to one our founder members, Mike Prior, who yet again has made a generous contribution of A4 paper, down to our last ream we were!!!! Thank you Mike it’s much appreciated.

-Chris Cole

Well the first major event has come and gone – this year for the 15th time! I refer to Have You Had Enough Turkey? The 15th Anniversary. This time organised my Len Young and Mike Bennett.

I have to admit to an extremely nervous moment, cos driving into Calne en route to Atwells, who do I see going in the opposite direction? Our Len and Mike! My reaction was I got the date wrong. Not knowing what else to do, Lin and I preserve, glad we did for at Atwells we meet up with the other members – phew! The reason why Len and Mike had debunked – they were delivering a huge Rolls Royce (driven by Mike) to a wedding being held at Bowood.

HYHET 15 The actual event – Fast becoming legendary in our own time!

Well I can tell you this – those that took part will never forget it. Our grand children will get bored by the retelling of this saga! In places there were turnings that had mysteriously moved, in others there were cross roads that disappeared and reappeared later on. Some, well one of us ended up in a farm yard and have the scars and mud to prove it. Mind you it made Caroline O’Kane smile, because it involved a BMW type mini. Dawn Chapman would have been amused as well!

Anyway, despite the anomalies it was a great day, to our extreme pride Lin and I completed the event, getting lost once or twice! Great stuff Mike and Len, a really good day out and worth all their effort. By the way the route had recently been driven around by about 40 people and they didn’t experience any anomalies – spooky!

One of the following photos will give Nick the shudders and bring a warm glow to Caroline and Dawn.

Where’s Len? We gather at Atwells and await the main man.

Nick surveys his camouflaged BMW long distance desert wagon. Believe me this picture doesn’t do it justice – the real thing looked much worse. Our thanks to Dave Goodfield for the shots.

And now the results

In first place (but there were 3 in the car) – Rachel, Steve and Dave Goodfield with 22.5 points.
Second:- Nick and Mike Goodfield with 20 points – but since there were only 2 in the car it was decided that they should take first place, however on appeal it was agreed that points should be deducted on account the car was filthy. Actually none of that happened, I made it up!
Third:-Chris and Lin a mere half a point behind N & M.
Fourth:- Jerry and Rachel with 17 points.
Fifth:- John and Caroline:- whisper it 10.
Sixth:- Victoria and Rob:- 5 points mostly for spelling their names correctly on the entry form.

This event is highly recommended it takes a lot of effort and time to produce the route and questions, a really big thank you again to Mike and Len. Do try to attend HYHET16, you will really enjoy it, it’s a lot of fun.

-Chris Cole

It’s been a busy time since the last Events List and some great shows have come and gone, but due to family commitments, Lin and I were not able to get along to 2 of our favourites – Bristol Mini Day and Cooper day at Beaulieu. Pleased to learn that despite my not being there that they went really well!. Great to see pictures and write up of BMD in the August Mini magazine. Good piccies of Rich Bolwell awarding the prizes.

Congratulations to Sandra Britton – the multi prize winner and to the Somerset Mini Owners Club who if I read the copy correctly won £200 for a penalty shootout! Congrats also to Yeovil Mini Mania for getting the best club stand award of £100.

At last I’ve started up the Mini, got it Mot’ed (passed first time, well apart from the rear number plate lights playing up and hand brake a bit slack!) but my sympathetic tester passed it, on the proviso I got them sorted and gave me the all important Cert.
Did 500 miles last year – a record annual mileage for many a year. Incidentally the garage involved is Park Lane autos, Corsham – good people with Minis.

Good thing it did pass, for the next day was the run to Gaydon (4th July). Car ran perfectly, good weather and good company. The British Motor Heritage museum always makes me nostalgic and sad, so many of the collection are ones that I’ve had or family members have owned. Sad cos it reminds me of the great marques that no longer exist, perhaps if some of the billions of £s that have been poured into failed Government projects had been put into modernising our motor industry, just maybe one or two might have survived. Honda, Nissan, BMW have all proved that we can still make good cars, so long as the production people are given the opportunity. Although Dawn and Caroline might not agree with that being said about the BMW Mini pretender!

Now the following comments are not in the correct date order but the next outing was the Help for Heroes run organised by Jerry of the Jesters Mini club. I reckon there were 200 plus Minis there, great run through Wootton Bassett, Lyneham and ending at Castle Combe race track. My guess is it might have raised well over £400 and for such a good cause. Great stuff.

After that run it was straight onto the Atwell Motor Museum (the organisation in which our Len Young and Mike Bennett are so importantly involved). Lin and I had an ulterior motive, having bought hundreds of raffle tickets for the prize! – a low mileage, immaculate Mini – the draw was being held that day. Sadly we didn’t win, but congratulations to the Calne lady who did and she’d only bought one ticket. Smashing turn out, so many great cars, all ages and all types.

Finally but by no means least a comment about Shakespeare Live. As you may know each year for many years we have organised the car parking. And for that we get paid a ‘fee’. Last year the Shakespeare organising committee asked for requests to be made for charitable donations. Rich Bolwell made a case on behalf of the club’s charity – The South West childrens hospice and we are delight to report we were selected, so in addition to the car parking fee of £350 we were awarded £1000 for our charity donation. A bit vote of thanks to Rich and also to those who helped with the parking – Len, Rich, Mike, Nick, Ollie and me!

This sum together with the BMD fee means that we will be able to make a really useful donation to the kids hospice. Not bad for a little club don’t you think?

-Chris Cole

The North Devon Grand Tour was very well attended by members, including those that had not been seen for a few years like Brendan West, Rich Clarke and Sarah Philips.

Even more surprising was that nearly all managed to make it without car trouble this year, although I think Len said he needs to sort the fuelling on his newly acquired Equinox as there’s something wrong with the injection system as the car is only returning about 8 mpg !

Six-Ex presented donations to the Hospice amounting to £1200 this year which is a fantastic achievement that we can all be proud of especially as we did not have the luxury of a high income from Shakespeare Live as we had done in previous years.  Many thanks to all those who have raised monies during the year.

We believe Terry and Linda are still counting the funds raised for CHSW but the running total on the day was around £40,000.

-Richard Bolwell

Wow, after the trauma of blowing the head gasket on the van and only finishing it at 2:30 am on the morning of departure, what an incredible event this turned out to be. Truly one of a kind.

I’m so glad we decided to do this – it was certainly well attended with myself, Len, Dawn, Jerry, Nick V, Rachel & Phil camping over the long weekend and Mike & Dave Bennett travelling up for the Mini 50 show on Sunday.
Travelling up on the Friday was fine if not a tad busy on the M5 – very stressful, but at least the head gasket held up to it, even if the driver was flagging ! Arrival to the site was a shambles but painless. Camp was set up with thanks to Phil & Cath for the loan of their excellent gazebo and to Nick and Len for transporting gear.

Saturday was spent mooching and chilling out – there was just so much to see with a huge range of cars from all over Europe and so many traders it took 2 days to get around them all.

We chose to avoid the evening entertainment on the Saturday but were told it featured Roy Wood of Wizard fame and he was very good. The same couldn’t be said about the quality of the on-site toilet and shower facilities – a cock up on the organisers behalf, but hey, we coped and we didn’t ever run out of water for a brew. I got the message that if you go camping at an IMM you shouldn’t expect to wash for the weekend ! That’s where Face Wipes come in handy – they should be mandatory kit to take on anyone’s list.

I spent most of Sunday in the concourse arena, where I competed the van in Class 8 – ‘Modified and Custom’, along with 8 other heavily modified cars, three of which had a VTEC, a Lotus Twin Cam and a Bike engine as their powerplants. The standard of cars never ceases to amaze me – stunning on both days – with Mini owners going to radical extremes to catch the judges eye such as leaving the original tyre stickers on or penning their cars in behind plastic chain link fencing using mirrors and chequer plated flooring to cover the grass up.

Luckily, I didn’t go to these extremes and was rewarded with a Class win. Not bad for an International event and one in which I had no idea I was going to do until the evening before.

It was a very hot day with bright, clear skies and lots of happy people keeping the traders content.

The remaining few of us (Nick, Dawn and myself) spent Sunday night in the Entertainment Tent listening to a great live band and, of course, sampling the venue’s liquid refreshments on offer – it had been a hard day after all.

True to form, the sunny weather wasn’t repeated the next day as it turned wet and drizzly for packing away the tents and camping gear.

However, rather than dampening our spirits, we just got on with it and then enjoyed a leisurely drive home.

A fantastic long weekend, I’d just like to thank Len, Dawn, Jerry, Nick, Rachel & Phil for some great company and to Phil who took some excellent shots on Ma’s camera whilst I was in the arena on Sunday.

There are lots of interesting photo’s of the event on various websites and forums but also in the October issues of Mini Mag and MiniWorld. I received my copies today (Wed 23rd).

There are a lot of people knocking the organisation of the event by the Birmingham Mini Owners Club on various forums, but apart from the lack of water in the showers and toilets and the piss poor arrival arrangements and a lack of security/official presence, I have every praise for these guys as there were thousands of people at this event, most of which had been there at the start of the week when Birmigham had been hit by torrential weather. In the spirit of adversity, BMOC pulled it off. Maybe not in style, but nonetheless, a great weekend if you came prepared for it which we largely did.

Roll on IMM 2010, 21-24 May, deepest Bavaria in Germany then to Swizerland in 2011.

-Richard Bolwell

Len and a few others had a great drive down to Devon to attend a very informal relaxed gathering of Mini’s at Atlantic Village along with motorbikes and clubs, all in aid of North Devon Mini Club’s charity fund raising events.

-Richard Bolwell