A30 Okehampton - roadside brew-up. These little journey breaks were a necessity of '60s trips to the West Country. A scalding pot of tea and much argument about the wisdom of locating the Primus under the petrol filler cap were obligatory details. I'm particularly pleased to see an appearance by the massive home-made first aid kit, this may have had something to do with the Primus. I referred, in comments at Unmitigated Nostalgia, to a fruit cake incident and I think this photo precedes it by a few minutes. The must-press-on approach resulted in many such scrapes including family members being left behind at filling stations, recklessly figuring they had time for a wee while the car was being gassed up. This car did some big trips, most notably one to Elba '69 in time to watch the flag planting trip to the moon by the Yanks on a very decrepit television. A large ham and a round of Parmesan were lost off the roof at a roundabout incident in Turin rushing back to get the car on the train to Paris. MUST PRESS ON !
Wonderful. Life on the road with Diplomat.But I need a bit more detail about that trailer. It looks suspiciously like the ammunition carrier for a 25-pounder artillery piece, which, knowing something of your antecedents is entirely possible.
ReplyDeleteAh - now then. This trailer was new around '68, probably to coincide with '68 DS Safari. It survives to this day - despite the hedge vaulting incident when it became dis-joined from the back of my CX Safari about '89. We had to retrieve it from a wheat field, wheels still spinning as it lay upside down, having deposited the contents (trip to the rubbish tip). On these West Country trips it would normally be full of wet weather gear, body boards, cake tins and booze.
ReplyDeleteYou want to watch out Diplo or Explorer Savage will be having the rear light clusters off your trailer.
ReplyDeleteFunnily enough Ron, those were the type of trailer lights we grew up with Whilst you were streaking up Humberstone Gate some of us were fiddling with cars and trailers in the days when you had to make your own lighting arrangements. Nice one here Diplo. I had a pair of those on the back of the 22 foot caravan I shared with the old Mk 1 pitched below an Iron Age hill fort on Salisbury Plain.... man. Classic 70's trailer lights. These days fifteen quid buys you a perfect trailer board ready to plug in. Where's the fun in that.
ReplyDeleteRubbalite - i suspect
ReplyDeleteThis has strange resonance even for me. I once had a very surreal conversation with Ron in the Doves in Hammersmith about a parallel universe we could possibly find ourselves in. Too long to recount here, and nigh impossible to make any sense of, it included a declaration from Ron that the way white rubber around bicycle rear lights tended to perish held a certain fascination for him.
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