Summer had arrived in the days prior to the club’s annual rally. The Wimbledon tennis championships had been proceeding with virtually no interruptions, so out came the bucket and sponge and the Autoglym polish in an effort to make the Traction look its best (well, the fly squash picked up during last year’s Brittany rally had to come off eventually!). But I’d overlooked one significant factor, namely that the weekend of the rally coincided with the annual Glastonbury Mud Festival, which this year featured unusual events including ‘canoeing through the camping fields’.

So, as we headed south on the M6 on Friday evening, it suddenly became mysteriously dark before the heavens opened and the motorway became more lake than road; once the grease in the wiper motor had warmed up a bit, the wipers did their best and we eventually arrived safely at the DeVere hotel, although I did have a bad case of ‘Traction foot’ caused by water dripping through the scuttle vent onto a sandal-shod accelerator foot!      

But no matter, the rain had abated, and what a pleasant sight greeted us as we swept into the hotel car park – a crescent of more than 30 neatly parked Tractions!

We duly checked in and went to join the other Tractionists in the restaurant for the evening’s entertainment. A brain-teasing and amusing ‘Black Country Quiz’ was given out to test our knowledge of the local dialect (sample: ‘Bir-nin-em’ translates as ‘Birmingham’, Boyk’ as ‘Bicycle’ and so on, for over a hundred questions!); very

curiously, Bernt and Elisabeth, our guests from Norway, seemed to manage it better than many of the native English speakers!

Then the highlight of the evening, as the ‘BeeGees Experience’ gave us an exclusive run through of their repertoire of classic BeeGees songs - cue much dancing in the aisles and a few Tractionists were brave enough to get up on stage to help out with the vocal harmonies! Many thanks to Steve Southgate, brother Adrian, son Stephen and to Nick Lester for putting on a great show for us! 

Saturday dawned, grey and drizzly at first, and after a hearty cooked breakfast everyone gathered in the hotel car park to attach their rally plaques and warm up their engines in preparation for the day’s outing, a tour of the countryside through which the Severn Valley Railway passes.

After a few motorway miles, our convoy route took us along some pretty (and pretty narrow!) lanes en route for Bridgnorth. A brief visit to an historic church in the village of Ryton was followed by a short (and steep) off-road section (a first for me in a Traction!). We also stopped in the delightfully named village of Badger, where a ‘chocolate box’ scene greeted us, with pretty thatched cottages dotted around a large duck pond, covered in lilies.

Our group got somewhat fragmented in busy Bridgnorth, after which we continued along the route of the Severn Valley Railway, which that weekend was putting on a 1940s War Time Theme event.

Highley Station was the venue for a mock battle, and we encountered various war-time jeeps and armoured vehicles along our route. We continued to Arley station, near to which we had reserved parking in a field, where we had our picnic lunch. The station was ‘all dressed up’ for the occasion, with war-time posters prominently displayed, and of course the station and platforms already have a genuine ‘period’ feel to them, anyway. There were many excellent costumes to be seen, and we even saw Winston Churchill supping a pint and puffing on an enormous cigar outside the Harbour Inn at Arley! Several steam trains also passed through while we were there, always a magnificent sight. We all enjoyed a sumptuous picnic (provided by ‘the management’ of the Rally!), whilst wondering why one Traction out of the whole bunch had somehow managed to park on the other side of the Severn, with only a footbridge crossing the river (sorry, Barry and Fred!).

Later in the afternoon, we headed off to the evening venue, the Black Country Living Museum, in Dudley, where we were greeted with a ‘welcome drink’ while many people changed into their various pre-war costumes in readiness for the evening’s entertainments. We took a tram down the hill to ‘the village’ (when the driver finally managed to coax it into life!), followed by a narrowboat trip on the Dudley Canal, which took us through a labyrinth of tunnels and basins; apparently, they used to hold concerts in the huge caverns left after the limestone had been quarried! We were given the chance to have a go at ‘legging’ the boat through one tunnel; Barrie Longden and Michael Pennington seemed to manage very well, but Paul de Felice found that his legs weren’t long enough! After disembarking, we all went to the ‘chippy’ for an excellent fish and chip supper (cooked properly in beef dripping, of course). Some folks washed it down with a ‘swift half’ from the spit-and-sawdust village pub, while Lynn and I took in a short Laurel and Hardy film, which made us late for our school lesson in the Victorian schoolroom; no matter, there were plenty of other miscreants for the teacher to deal with, notably that very naughty boy, Bernie Shaw! We all had our fingernails checked, had to recite our ‘times tables’, read the alphabet backwards and write our name in ‘copper plate writing’ on a slate. The teacher certainly had her hands full, what with Barrie Joyce’s insubordination, Marcus Lasance having to be punished for eating a sweet, and Hazel Shinebroom being told she was a ‘floozy’ with painted nails! The cane was administered to several naughty pupils, namely Barry Joyce, Michael Pennington, Terence McAuley, Juliette York and Hazel Shinebroom! After the discipline of the schoolroom, we went off to the Victorian fairground for a ride on the Merry-go-Round, or an attempt to win at the Coconut Shy, or to experience the Cake Walk, which we appeared to cause to break down by not following instructions! Lynn and I were the only ones to take last orders at the pub, thereby missing the last tram, but were rewarded by a ride in the dicky seat of Steve Southgate’s cabriolet (Elisabeth told us that in Norway, they call it the ‘mother-in-law seat’!). Then it was back to the hotel for a last drink, to be met with some strange looks from the other guests, as we still sported our fancy dress outfits!

Sunday arrived bright and sunny, and we were joined by a few day visitors for a convoy drive to Ironbridge, which took us through some more delightful countryside, over the Wrekin (see Black Country quiz – ‘around the Wrekin’ was one phrase up for translation!) and through villages with quaint names such as Little Wenlock and Much Wenlock. One or two relatively minor breakdowns along the way, but with willing and able helpers like Dave Hackett and Peter Simper on hand, these were soon ‘sorted’. We had a good look at the historic Iron Bridge (first in the world, built in 1779 by Abraham Darby) and then went to visit the Coalport China Museum, where we had a fascinating stroll through workshops, and even into a gigantic kiln (where, we learnt, it takes 4 days to complete a firing). The china industry has a wonderful vocabulary all its own, and I’m now considering a change of career , to train as a ‘jiggerer’, or maybe a ‘saggar makers bottom knocker’. Then it was a short ride up to Blist’s Hill Victorian Town, which is a reconstruction on the site of an old blast furnace alongside the Shropshire Union Canal. The first port of call for many was the Inn, and then the pie shop (who ate all the pasties?). There was much to see here, and many people to speak to about the ‘old ways’ – dressmaker, druggist, butcher, baker and candlemaker were all working in their respective shops. We saw a working steam engine, and had a walk along the overgrown canal to see what’s left of an ‘incline plane’, which is basically a means of getting a boat from one level to another; but on rails, not through locks. We saw Samson and David, double beam blower engines which were used instead of bellows in the blast furnace.

All too soon it had turned 4 o’clock, and we all met up for the award of prizes, followed by the raffle draw. A heartfelt vote of thanks, and gifts of chocolates and Champagne was offered to the hard-working organisers, Peter and Sheila Marley, Steve and Joy Southgate.

Then it was time to set off in our separate directions; for us it was the M54 to begin with, and I still don’t know what Richard Hooley was doing strolling along the hard shoulder - he appeared to be carrying something which may have dropped off his car!