A Quick trip to the Lake District

[DaveL485]

I saw a day-drive out on Facebook by a Clio group and joined up. I was planning on taking the V6 on my own, then decided i'd drive up the night before as it was ~160 miles to get there, 300 mile route, 160 miles home. Then I decided to stay the following night too, and then I mentioned it in one of my chat groups and it ended up me, @rogerreno , @la21t , @am21t , @johnspin and Dips headed up the M6 with @marcel joining in from Europe last minute on Saturday afternoon.

Traffic was the main problem for the southerners on the way up, but we got there around the planned time anyway after making strong progress for the last hundred miles. Welcome to Crooklands....



Sunday we hit the start point at Devils Bridge snack bar, very pretty area. It started to fill up and eventually we had about sixty or seventy cars crammed in for the start of the run!







About to leave and....



As it turns out though this early rain was all that we saw really, and the rest of the day was absolutely lovely. After we pulled out of the start point we were just in a big queue of cars basically. Ambling along. I was in the front of "our" group and I decided to pull over into a car park and let the main pack pull ahead and give us some space to play catch up, and as we pulled in Amrit's car cut out Tried to restart it and the battery was dead as a doornail Ten minutes faffing about and a bump start and we decided it was a duff battery/failure and he could carry on, it would just need a bump or a jump at each stop *sigh* !

 

[DaveL485]

Off we went in pursuit of the main pack, until a few miles later I took a wrong turn and Lee followed me, but the rest didnt and we got split. Then me and Lee also split up trying to get back to the gang, FFS what a mess. In the end though I got some cracking roads to myself and I caught the guys before the first stop, which is also where we rejoined the main pack too. Johnspins car was now making funny noises like the clutch bearing was dying and Dips had brake issues and the accumulator wasn't running properly. Give me strength! Got some nice pics at that stop though and the Vee posed for some shots with a few other cars.






















We departed for Stage 2, with the pack, and got going. Me and Lee decided we wanted to play up front and started picking off...well....everything. It was a hoot, and we were really getting a move on.

 

[DaveL485]

As me and Lee were making progress we hit a few bits of traffic, and then some real gnarly back roads where passing was impossible, the sort of road where 2 cars squeeze past each other with your wing mirror dragging in the scenery. We admired the view as we were crawling along behind some sunday drivers. It was stunning.











The picture I took here is particularly nice.



On the other side of that wall though is Lee's 21, stranded, after the gear linkage under the car failed. The nylon bushes in the linkage came apart and it fell off, literally. No internet, no phone signal. The rest of the guys caught up and pulled over save Dips who had vanished and then the main pack caught up and passed us (top gear rules lol).
Was a bit of a head scratcher, but we managed to cobble something together with 4 jubilee clips and 2 zipties to get first, third and fifth gears back. Lee, Amrit and Johnspin decided to return to the hotel at this point as they were all carrying issues.
Me and Roger wanted to carry on with the route, so we decided to do that but with the agreement if any of the others got stuck we would come and support. We bump started Amrit's car (again) and drove on to a slate mine tour place and stopped for lunch and to let the cars cool off a bit. We also got hold of Dip who's brakes had seemingly started working, but he agreed to meet Lee & Co at the hotel. They did all make the hotel in the end fortunately.

Me and Rog carried on.







We finished stage 2 and bounced straight to stage 3 without stopping. This circled around the lakes a bit, but the traffic was mental. We spent most of stages 3 & 4 crawling around through tourist traffic and Sunday drivers....it was very frustrating. I was about ready to sack it and go back to the hotel after a particularly long, 20mph crawl behind a behemoth of a coach that had absolutely no place on a lake district back road. We stopped after stage 4 and decided that we would try stage 5 but if it turned out the same we'd abort.

Well.

I'm glad we didn't. We started the climb up into the Pennines behind three cars led by a pickup. It took five mins to clear these on the twisty uphil section, but when we did... Oh my. The following three hours were spent on pretty much empty winding Pennines roads playing the most fun game of chase ever. The traffic of the lakes was forgotten and the 3.0 V6 in the back was singing away like some sort of divine operatic masterpiece. It was outrageous, and the car was absolutely flying. It's the first big run I have done in the thing and once I got into the groove of it, it really did excel itself. I think even Roger was surprised at the pace it had across the twisty roads. The next pic I took was the end of stage 5.

(Yes that is a spare wheel strapped to the engine cover)



Didnt want clean wheels anyway.



Stage 6 was the same. Basically the roads to ourselves. We got back to the hotel at 19:15 (after departing at 070) exhausted, and delighted with our excessive use of liquid exploding dinosaurs.

The tarmac terrorists having a well-earned rest.

 

[DaveL485]

Monday morning we inhaled a cooked brekky, then broke out the spanners. I found a loose fan belt on Johnspins car (very odd noise though), tightened that up, job done. Dips brakes were behaving, we jumped Amrits car. Lee's linkage was just about hanging on and we set off down the M6 for @Haz who was only sixty miles away. What a legend, he met us at the door with a new gear linkage bar for Lee and a spare battery for Amrit. Can't thank you enough mate!
We chucked the spares on and off we went on the homeward trip, which went without further issues and everyone made it home.

We have all ordered a new set of gear linkage bushes LOL

 

[Neal R19]

Looks like an awesome weekend.

In a way it's quite good to have a few minor issues to give something to think about and macgyver a work around, plus a story to tell afterwards.

 

[Big Steve - Raider]

Looks like you had a great day @DaveL485 and did it the right way. Couple of days before the event I was mulling it over, but when I saw the effort involved in driving there from Peteroghorror and back in one day, it would have broken me!! Would definately like to give those roads a drive sometime in the future though! Nice writeup

 

[johnspin]

Great time .

 

[DaveL485]

Great pic this mate!

View attachment 150688

 

[Adey]

looks awesome to be fair, and no crappy number plate in sight

is it a real road trip if theres no drama with cars needing roadside fix's?

 

[DaveL485]

is it a real road trip if theres no drama with cars needing roadside fix's?

I don't know I dont think I have ever had one without the old drama llama rearing it's furry head!

 

[la21t]

Cracking weekend, I've changed just about everything on the 21 in the last 10yrs.......just not the nylon bushes.

I will be once the kids go back to school though!

 

[la21t]

@DaveL485 post a pic of where I broke down then!

 

[DaveL485]

@DaveL485 post a pic of where I broke down then!

This is the only one I took, I was too busy trying to cobble your linkage back together to take arty farty pictures lol