Southrun Four,
26th August 2001
Sidewinder
Video Summary of the Day
Small image, 2min.
6sec., Real Movie Format 4.7Mb
Other
Web Sites with S4 Photos
www.infernoelise.com
(No longer available) www.medreg.co.uk
What
an event! Numbers topping the last run by just 1 car, a total of 61 cars
but the most mixed batch of models yet, from Esprits through to Sevens.
The numbers as counted by Gavin 'Inferno' Westwood stood at, 40 Elise S1s,
4 Elise S2s, 1 Exige, 3 Esprits, 1 340R, 5 Elans, 1 79er, 3 49ers, 3 Lotus
7s, & 1 Locust. We have to thank Paul for his sponsorship of 51
special edition Southrun 4 t-shirts in the big t-shirt give away, which
lasted no time at all, gone in minutes!
I
tried to get to the start around 30 minutes before everyone else so I
could grab everyone arriving on video. This didn't work out, 15 cars were
already parked up waiting. Right away I was thrusted a walkie-talkie by
Matt 'S2' Shelley, (see video) which were useful en-route, though yes, you
cant hear anything over 60 with the roof and windows down.
The start worked out well, you could see batches of Lotus's coming from the north down the duel carriage way from the car park.
From the stories I've heard, many of you had a fun packed day, especially that little group who accidentally did page two, first, and ended up in Brecon! Didn't you realise that was Southrun One?
It
was good though to see that many of you arrived in good time for the lunch
stop, which worked out well with plenty of room to park. The first stage
of the course took us through the Forest of Dean. The roads through here
are great, fairly quiet most of the way, and the 60 limit in most area's
giving us all a good drive through the scenic bends and hill climbs.
After an hour at the lunch
stop of talking engine upgrades, the PTP165 and of course Rob's Esprit
(thanks for the sit-in), we were all off onto stage two, which was
slightly more interesting in many ways. Many of you commented on the 
upside-down
car on that scary hair pin, no, I didn't put it there, but it was one hell
of a warning which worked! May be we should be replacing speed camera's in
this way? But before all that, we had the McDonalds-unplanned-Drive-Thru
stop. Yep, I think you can imagine several Lotus cars in a queue with
nothing on order. Having trouble? See the video clip link at the top of
this page. It really did happen. What is was, someone unmentionable
thought we were lost, and decided to stop at the McDonalds car park, using
the drive-thru as the exit. It's was amusing explaining what was going on
to the girl at second window.
As we headed out of
Hereford, we got on to the return to Monmouth part of the route which took
us through the last part of the stage where the route gets progressively
tighter. Eventually
we caught up with the main group after our, erm, detour at McD's and found
a great car park by the cattle market in Monmouth where I got to test
drive the PTP demonstrator. Quick!
It was the best drive we've had for Southrun to date, and if you missed it, I can only say may be we'll do a repeat of it in the future. Watch this space.
Thanks to you all for coming to Wales and making the event work. Hope to see you all on the next one.
Craig D.
© Craig Diment 2000