With a Tent On The Running Board
14,000kms and 12 Countries in a 90-year-old vintage Bentley.
Chitty, our 1925 Bentley had been part of our family for 25 years.
It came to us in a pile of parts and took me a few years to work out where everything fitted and, more importantly, what was missing.
The missing bits proved very difficult to find and expensive to acquire when I did find them.
I always said I would pass it on to a new custodian when I was 75. In 2014, just before I turned 76 and Chitty turned 90, I thought my wife Lesleyann and I should do a last hurrah around Europe.
We had done many other mega trips in Chitty including 12,000km around Europe in 2003, and a Coast-to-Coast in Africa in 2007. Other trips included crossing Australia a number of times and two tours of New Zealand. So she and we were well blooded.
Perhaps because of all these previous marathons we were a bit laid-back in our preparation this time. What should have been a jolly jaunt through Europe taking part in a series of colourful historic motoring events turned into something of an endurance test as we constantly tweaked Chitty to keep her moving forward, travelling through 12 countries from the south of France to Sweden (including a terrifying crossing of the Oresund Bridge, featured in the TV series “The Bridge”).
After a canter through Britain where our good and mechanically talented friend Mike Sayers helped re-fettle the car, and his wife re-fettled Lesleyann’s motoring esprit and laundry, we had the confronting 1000-Mile Round Ireland marathon – organised by the Bailey team, who we tend to consider family – sadly during which we crashed in a speed trial.
Followers of the blog we published online complained they needed an
aspirin and a lie-down after each episode.
So be prepared, if you choose to join us on the re-run of Chitty’s last hurrah in these pages, to have an aspirin, whiskey or Valium to hand.