Last weekend was excellent!! First time out driving the GT6 this year. Quite a challenge as the first event was the "Nacht van het Oosten". A nightrally driven in the north-east of NL. Being on a double duty, doing the rally as a CTH member and also being one of the five Club Triumph entries! We arrived at the scene around 15.00. The overseas CT entries showed up another two hours later. Just in time for the chinese buffet!! We start the rally 18.08 just one minute before Theo and René in their magnificant 7. Off we are, using the hight-tech GPS unit as a tripmeter. Which seems to be very accurate. Only the resetting is a bit of a fiddle. It needs two buttons to reset, one of them being a tiny joystick. Not easy to press in a bumpy car. Have to say my co-driver Rob managed and did a great job on the navigating. Only went seriously wrong once. Another good thing about the garmin GPS is the tracking option. With this you can check the route you've driven afterwards on your computer. It's a great gadget!! The roads used in the rally were fantastic. We had so much fun trashing the GT6 around. It's amazing how quiet it is in that area. Back at the finish we met up with Theo and René. As usual they where in for ages. That wedge is a real rocket! (or Theo is total nuts) Not much longer for the UK entries to come in. First Tim Bancroft and James Carruthers in the mk1 2.5PI (aka the grey thing). Not much later followed by Doug Foreman and his Dutch co-driver Willem Wiersma. I heard they had a good time together, except for some language problems. Now we only had to wait for the works team to come in. That took quite a while, though finally they found their way back to "New Peking". After some more chatting we deceided to drive home. 02.00 I drove the GT6 into our street. It managed to do all of the trip without breaking down. It ran very well, only the gearbox wasn't too happy yet about quick down shifting. The UK crews had a hotel in Deventer, we would see them again the next day for part 2 of this excellent weekend.
On Sunday we met up again with the UK guys in Limburg. The most southern part of NL and to my opinion the most interesting for driving Triumphs. First we joined together at a petrolstation next to the motorway. From there we drove further south. It was foggy and cold, but it would clear up soon. After driving some interesting roads and (as usual) upsetting hikers we stopped in Noorbeek for lunch. The famous "D'r Pley " sorted us out with a perfect lunch, some of theme being local specialties. After that we did some more driving on what I think is the best strip of tarmac in the NL, Camerigger berg and vijlenerbos. with the sun out but still to cold for cyclists it's the perfect time for a quick run on this sweeping road. Another benefit is the good visibilty through the trees as they have no leaves yet. Think I did the fastes run ever in my life. The car was running so well. Theo took James out for a spin in the 16valve wedge. Think he was "impressed" by the performance of that car, according to the big smile on his face. After some more driving and photoshooting it was time to say goodbye to the UK guys. They had to catch a train and time was running out. For me, Willlem and Theo it wasn't the end of the weekend yet. We took some more backroads on or way home, had another stop in Stevensweert and finally enjoyed a great meal in Roermond. After that we said goodbye to Theo. Willem stayed at my house for the night, because he didn't have money for the trainticket back home. (being a student he can travel for free in weekdays). I really enjoyed myself all over the weekend. Good to drive my car again and even better to spend time with all of you!! Finally there are some photo's posted here
