Area 10 October 2024 Update
Jeff Sears | Published on 10/5/2024
Area 10 October 2024 Report
On Saturday 31 August, Area 10 Members had the choice of three events to attend - Salon Prive at Blenheim Palace, the AMHT Festival at Gaydon and the Concours of Elegance at Hampton Court. I (Jeff) was amongst the 50 or so Members’ Astons at Hampton Court, and several other Astons featured in the Concours itself. The weather was mainly dry and several of those who chose not to indulge in the £120 Fortnum’s picnic, assembled for an Area 10 picnic close to our cars, captured by Boz Medland.
Just five days later, 20 Members enjoyed a tour and tasting at the Harrow and Hope Winery in Marlow. Amongst the vines, owner Henry Laithwaite gave an entertaining account of his career and his experiences which led to him establishing the vineyard on the south-facing slopes of the Thames valley. Guided by French tradition he named the vineyard after his experience preparing the ground – due to the high degree of flint, he harrowed, and hoped the plough would survive! After a tour of the vineyard and production facilities, the group enjoyed a generous (for non-drivers) tasting of three of his sparkling wines, and some of us took the opportunity to buy a few bottles to enjoy later. Afterwards we headed for The Royal Oak in Marlow who made us very welcome and provided excellent food – a possible venue for a future meeting. Our thanks go to Jane Brill for organising the whole evening for us.
Our monthly meeting for September was held at The White Hart, Nettlebed where Members again enjoyed the South African-themed food and sowed the seeds for events for next year. Graham Maidlow also proposed a return to Jenner’s Café in November and so that has now been arranged
Andy Fell again established our weekend presence at the Kop Hill Climb with a marquee and four flags marking out our patch. We had a dozen Astons based in our area over the two days some of the older ones of which went up the hill. Photo by new Area 10 Member, Mark Pilling.
| 26Area10 Members’ cars were registered for the Prodrive anniversary celebration which took place in Banbury on Sunday 22 September. The weather leading up to it was pretty unpleasant and, on the day, only 13 of those cars actually turned up to park in the Spiceball Country Park. Our Astons were vastly outnumbered by row upon row of Subaru Imprezza WRXs. In the town centre there was a display of the range of cars that Prodrive had prepared for motorsport over the past 40 years including Escorts, 6R4, Scoobies and of course Vantages. On a stage outside the town hall, various key characters in the history of Prodrive were interviewed including David Richards and drivers such as Darren Turner and Jonny Adam, winners of the Le Mans LMGTE class in 2017. The photo shows Jonny with Beechdean’s Andrew Howard and me beside Andrew’s current Vantage GT3 race car. |
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More photos from the eventareposted on ourArea10 Facebook page.
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