Scotland Gathering, July 24 2010

[Dico]

Did Murph and Mandy make it ok?

I hear he had a spectacular spin at Cadwell

[Dico]

Did Mork and Mindy, erm I mean Murph and Mandy make it ok?

I hear he had a spectacular spin at Cadwell

[John_W]

I'll mention it when I see them. I'll be leaving for Gairnshiel in half an hour. Weather's looking great, so let's hope it holds.
John

[GeoffSmith]

Did Mork and Mindy, erm I mean Murph and Mandy make it ok?

Hahahahaha! An opportunity too damned good to miss.....

MorphAndMindy.jpg

Enjoy the Scottish beer Murph.

[Andy_J]

Thanks Archie great weekend

A couple of pictures of the cars

[John_W]

Great weekend, Archie. Thanks for your hospitality. The food was great. It was also good to see many old friends, Ron & Gloria, Monty, Andy, Stevo, and the Scottish Lotus crowd.
John

[BigErch]

Thanks to everyone that came along, it was a great weekend. Only one broken car left here on a trailer and it wasn't Missy for a change!

[m400kay]

Just a quicky to say many thanks to Erch and Justine for being so welcoming and having such nice kids, had a great time now what about next year!!!!!!!!!!

[Monty]

It was well worth the trip, what a weekend Big thanks to Arch and Justine for putting on the event and a good turn out with a great mix of cars.

A few photo`s.

[GeoffSmith]

Mork, it needs a password to login to Photobucket! Love to Mandy.

[Monty]

Did Mork and Mindy, erm I mean Murph and Mandy make it ok?

Hahahahaha! An opportunity too damned good to miss.....

MorphAndMindy.jpg

Enjoy the Scottish beer Murph.

You lot are funny whilst i`m away

[GeoffSmith]

I like what Stevo's done to the Arancio bomb.... Looks vaguely familiar....

[Monty]

Here`s a vid which was on the way to Archies, it`s a little boring and a shame i didn`t run the cam on the way back lets just say i need to check out the bottom of the car

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usKmLZcX3UU

[BigErch]

Hey Monty, was that the little card camera on your number plate? If so, where did u get that?

[Monty]

Arch here`s a quote from this thread viewtopic.php?f=72&t=7783&start=40

Since mine took along time to come might be worth getting from someone in the uk eg http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MINI-DV-SMALLEST- ... 35aa46c22e

Bought one of those Mini cams MD-80 of ebay for about £12 from Hong Kong (but it took 31 days to turn up ) they are small, about the size of my thumb

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MEWNX:IT

I used a 8gb Micro SD card from http://www.memorybits.co.uk/ gives approx 4 hrs footage (look for discount codes on there site)


Did a Test run with the camera attached to the front number plate, certainly good enough as a 2nd cam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhCzaIasHJw

Need to buy a Shaving plug as the charger is only 2 prong.

the brackets aren`t very good as one of the little plastic lugs that hold the cam has snapped so i will use a plastic zip tie to hold in play.

The only thing is i don`t know how to remove the date and time in the vid

Has anyone got any video editing software that allows vid in vid footage? as i`m going to run two cameras and would like to have the other cam playing on a small screen inside the main footage.

[Rambo]

Sounds like a good time was had by all ? Hopefully Archie will arrange the next meet so that it doesn't coincide with Silverstone

Wouldn't want to miss out on Jedward !!

[BigErch]

Sounds like a good time was had by all ? Hopefully Archie will arrange the next meet so that it doesn't coincide with Silverstone !!

Tell you what Mark we'll organise it around your busy schedule next year There must be a lot of money in gardening with all the holidays you take

[ronjr]

Here is your golden oldie with some late observations on the weekend, which only now with all those pictures, do Gloria and I fully appreciate how lucky we were to be there.
Firstly, a big thank you to Justine, Archie's wife, who concentrates on us and not the cars. The venue is also their business for corporate weekends, so we were privileged to be there at Archie's very generous subsidised rate.

Monty and long suffering Mandy came all the way from Manchester, but being some sort of King, he could not resist a track day on the way up. Oh! the energy. I commend to all, his U Tube video on the latter part of his journey. He thought it might be boring. Boring to me are the videos taken form the cockpit at tracks. Most of our cars are for the road and you will note from Monty's video: the bends in the road which are an utter joy to whisk round; the clear views ahead for so doing; the views of the Cairngorm peaks as you pass through; the poles marking the sides of the road - useful for snow time; the fact that there was not another car in sight all the way until they were at the top of Glenshee. All of you from the Midlands to the M25 and beyond, eat your heart out for such driving conditions!

What a choice of Lotus through the ages were there - from the Sprint and Plus Two to the Evora. E6 ACL belongs to Alastair Laing, who is the same age as me. He has worked hard all his life and this is one of his rewards - the first one off the production line. I actually saw the production lines at Hethel on the way to Donington last year - one was for the Evora and the other for the Tesla bound for California.

Back to the bread and butter M100s. I had borrowed Rev L-J's 'M100 LJR'; she could not come as the weekend is her busiest time. There is a picture of it there somewhere.

At the lodge gates Archie had a big Lotus banner spread across the front. This attracted one or two passers-by, one of whom was a German and his wife who were touring Scotland. Wolfgang worked for BMW but his fun car back home is a Lotus. I gave him my ManElan flag which Archie had made up for those of us who were going to Malvern.

I leave you with the thought that "race car" spells the same backwards as forwards - Monty take note!

[ronjr]

In my great tortoise haste ; two errors: 'form' should be 'from' and 'Man Elan' should of course be 'McElan'

[John_W]

... he could not resist a track day on the way up.

... Most of our cars are for the road and you will note from Monty's video: the bends in the road which are an utter joy to whisk round; the clear views ahead for so doing; the views of the Cairngorm peaks as you pass through; the poles marking the sides of the road - useful for snow time; the fact that there was not another car in sight all the way until they were at the top of Glenshee. All of you from the Midlands to the M25 and beyond, eat your heart out for such driving conditions! ...

... What a choice of Lotus through the ages were there - from the Sprint and Plus Two to the Evora. ...

... At the lodge gates Archie had a big Lotus banner spread across the front. This attracted one or two passers-by, one of whom was a German and his wife who were touring Scotland. Wolfgang worked for BMW but his fun car back home is a Lotus. I gave him my McElan flag which Archie had made up for those of us who were going to Malvern ...

Some good comments from Ron, which reminded me of some things I'd forgotten about the weekend.
Monty and Mandy's drive to deepest Aberdeenshire after doing a trackday just shows you :

a) what a fantastically reliable all-rounder the Elan is
b) that for him to even consider doing that, Monty's brain must work differently from most of us (eg when he opened the boot to reveal not the expected two weekend bags and an oversupply of girlfriend accoutrements, but two spare track tyres and a crash helmet)
c) that Monty has powers of persuasion beyond our comprehension to get Mandy to accompany him (I hope you'll both be back - the offer of a spare room stands)

Ron's comments about the roads are true also. It was actually a surprisingly busy weekend on the roads around Balmoral (school holidays), but as Monty's video shows, still not overcrowded. Archie's Lotus banner mentioned by Ron managed to attract more than one passing group to stop at the gates and either look over the wall or come up the drive to have a nosey.

Anyway, below is a link to some photos and a video of the weekend. I haven't edited out my gibbering commentary, so you'll just have to turn the sound off.

Thanks again, Archie and Justine. It was great fun for us, but for you two it must have been like a busman's holiday.

John

Gairnshiel Lotus weekend 24th July 2010 :- Video (4 mins) ; Photographs .
For both of them, you'll need to use

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