Only Fools and Horses Tour of the New Forest Pt 2 (Fatbloke and Poppy Pt 59)

Blog - Tour of the New Forest Pt 2

4/10/2019

By Mike Peake

After one of the most enormous and tasty breakfasts I’ve ever had and checking Poppy’s fluid levels, we set off to meet the crowd at “Sandy Balls? No. I always walk like this”. No one was in the car park yet so we went round to Old Mother Cole mansions for a chat and to see if we could scrounge another coffee. We couldn’t but we did get hold of one of the wonderful tour plaques that our group sponsor Alveston Press of Derby had made for us. (That’s Phil Allin that is. Top chap and excellent printer for all your printing needs)

When it was time to head to the car park, Poppy had a bit of a tantrum and refused to start. The strong smell of petrol suggested to Windy Sweet Kitten that she was flooded and suggested a bump start would be the cure and along with Mrs FB’s assistance immediately started pushing. He was right and Poppy was running again.

Poppy hasn’t had a proper run since I rebuilt the carburettor at the start of the year, so I suspected that the mixture wasn’t as good as it should be. I decided I would have a bit of a fiddle with it in the car park while we were waiting to leave. As Super Enthusiast Man wasn’t there, no amount of staring mournfully at the faulty part drummed up any help so I had to do it myself - which is where my bumbling incompetence struck again.

In reaching my hand through to the mixture nut on the base of the carb, I burned my hand on the manifold. Then in my rush to withdraw my hand I first impaled, then sliced open my palm on the end of the choke cable. So, with blisters on the top of my hand and blood dripping from the palm, I looked around sheepishly. No one had noticed. The down side of this was no sympathy for my injury. The plus side was that no one would know about my bumbling incompetence unless I was daft enough to put it in the blog and I’m not going to do that! (Oh …. Damn!)

Despite my injuries, I manfully struggled on and manage to tweak the mixture a bit. Whatever I did worked to some extent and mostly cured her reluctance to start when warm. More fiddling required when I get home though.

It’s time to start the tour so let me introduce the participating cars and their owners.

Representing the Isle of Wight Jaguar owners club, we have :-

Richard Bell's XK8

Roger Spaven's XK8

Matt Samantha and Jay Parish in the X-Type

Brian Milliner in the stunning XKR

The Enthusiasts were made up of the following:-

Gar Cole in his “saved from IOW banger racers” 1993 Mk1 Mondeo And Paul Cheetham our resident stunt photographer.

Windy “Sweet Kitten” Woodward in his still stunning Ford Zephyr.

Phil Allin in his P5 Stately home.

Don and Everest and Louisa Hargrave in a lovely Triumph Stag.

Dominic Coleman in his ex-River Island Cottage Crayford convertible Ford Corsair.

Andy “2 Pants” Perman in the newly restored and stunning VDP Allegro.

Martin white in the V8 SD1 Vitesse. Disappointing only in the fact that we’d all hoped he’d bring his fire engine!

Jo Tait and Nick Arthur in the Jensen.

Bernard Owen with Webster. The ex Practical Classics Maxi.

Mrs FB and yours truly in Poppy, the newly restored (ahem) Triumph Herald 13/60.

Actually, Nick and Jo weren’t there. Nick claimed he was fixing the window in the Jensen and that we weren’t to wait. They’d catch us up.

10 minutes after we set off, we got a message to say that he was passing the “Sandy Balls? No. I always walk like this” car park, so the convoy pulled into a parking area to wait. They soon caught up & Jo let slip that it wasn’t Nick doing the fixing but actually the mechanic from the garage 2 doors down from the pub they were staying in. I had an idea that this would be the case as I have never ever, ever seen Nick with a spanner in his hands. Beer? Yes. Spanners? Never!

Now the convoy was complete, we set off again for a very pleasant drive through the New Forest.

This leg of the run took us through the lovely town of Lyndhurst made not so lovely by the huge traffic jam caused by the traffic lights in the town centre and the fact that every car in the New Forest was there. It had us all nervously watching our temperature gauges as they steadily rose and also broke up the convoy.

Gar’s usual philosophy of “Leaving no man behind” seemed to have gone out the window now he was in his comfy and reliable Mondeo instead of Nelson. He pressed on at only fractionally sub sonic speeds. Phil, Pants Perman and I managed to hold onto his coat tails, just. The 4 of us arrived at our 1st official stop in a car park in Milford on Sea. Gar takes us to all the best places! To be fair, the view was spectacular.

As we pulled into the front row overlooking the Sea, I was going to pull in nose 1st but the rest were reversing in so I followed suit as it would make great photos with the Needles behind in the distance.

It was some time before the rest of the convoy arrived, but arrive they did. Except Nick and Jo in the Jensen and Don and Louisa in the Stag. Don was getting hopelessly lost and Nick was blindly following having learned nothing from our previous tours. They caught up eventually.

As you can see from the next picture, it was rather blustery and cold in the car park. Most of us went for hot drinks from the café but one member plumbed for a rum and raisin cornet. Can you guess who?