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London-Brighton Run 2023
I happened to see the signposts for the London-Brighton veteran car run up on the side of the road when I was coming back from London last week, so on Sunday I got up and went to see the cars pass. I wasn't early enough to get all the way up to Hyde Park this time, but I managed to establish myself by the side of the road just short of the turn-off to Croydon, where I spotted a couple of mechanics with tins of motor oil and toolboxes who looked as if they were something to do with the race :-)
Indeed they were, and they were happy enough to talk to me while we waited for the action to start, which took some considerable time; of course nowadays everyone is in touch with their 'team' by mobile phone, and apparently there was a rumour going round that a lot of the cars -- which were supposed to have been divided between a Red Route and a Blue Route, so that at this point I would only ever have seen half of them -- had gone off down the wrong route due to inadequate signage at the split. At any rate only two cars out of the six or so they were waiting for ever turned up, and eventually after we had been there about an hour and a half or so they packed up, out everything back into their support vehicle, and drove off to the next rendezvous point with their supplies of spare water and oil. (Both of the cars that stopped came in for oil top-ups, which had to be introduced into each valve/cylinder in turn with an oil can, and one of them had a radiator leak -- the radiator being on the side of the seat, with the engine underneath it with a little door that opened at the back! -- and was visibly dripping water, which needed refilling.)
I had brought a flask of hot chocolate, but it was really an insulated water flask rather than a Thermos and didn't have an integrated cup; I hadn't realised this would be an issue until at this point I attempted swigging scalding hot chocolate directly out of the bottle! It was clear that I was going to have to drink it very, very slowly and cautiously, however chilled I was, so I told myself that I might as well stay until I had finished the flask, and if no more cars had turned up that would prove that it was all over and I could go home. At this point I had only seen about a couple of dozen cars in total, but we were only about six miles from the start of the race, which had started a good two hours earlier, and even a veteran car ought to have been able to cover the distance in that time. They must have all gone off down the other route.
I have no idea what had been going on, but for whatever reason, after a long gap and just as I was finishing my hot cocoa, more cars did come... and then more and more, in far larger groups than before. I had brought my camera with me but hadn't used it in my earlier 'embedded' position with the mechanics, as it seemed an intrusion when they had allowed me to hang around their work. This time I did get it out of its case and took a whole set of photographs. The best results were obtained by snapping the cars when they were halted at the traffic light, since even in 'action' mode the shutter release is so slow that I ended up with a lot of pictures showing the fronts and backs of cars just entering and leaving the frame :-p What I hadn't noticed, unfortunately, was that there was a van with fluorescent warning stripes parked immediately opposite my chosen photography spot, which meant that a lot of the otherwise good photos were completely dominated by this lurid object appearing behind the car and its passengers!
Luckily I did move around to several different locations, including multiple attempts at snapping the cars as they actually turned the corner (the passengers diligently hand-signalling the turn on the left-hand side). Most of the latter were missed shots since the cars were inevitably in motion at that moment, but I successfully got a couple of flukes. I also tried deliberately shooting into the early morning sun to capture some 'going away' pictures in silhouette, but the automatic exposure wasn't really up to it. (It wasn't coping very well in general with the mixture of low sun and deep shadow; the pictures on the whole came out grainy.)
However, I got a small collection of just-about-usable pictures: http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/Albums/Cars/index.html
In any case I didn't even attempt to photograph most of the cars as they passed. I wanted to be able to enjoy them properly, without being enslaved to a pinprick image in the viewfinder the whole time :-p
I was surprised to see quite early on a car with "GENEVIEVE" painted on its bonnet, and wondered if it could possibly be the 'real' Genevieve from the film, or whether someone else had just decided to name their car after the fictional one. But apparently it actually was the original Genevieve (although it had been renamed as such for the benefit of the film, having previously been known as 'Annie'!) which had been sent off along with its co-star at the start of the rally to celebrate seventy years since the film was released. It's a strange thought that at the time of filming, when it represented a deeply obsolete past, the car was 'only' fifty years old; it is now a hundred and twenty years old....
Indeed they were, and they were happy enough to talk to me while we waited for the action to start, which took some considerable time; of course nowadays everyone is in touch with their 'team' by mobile phone, and apparently there was a rumour going round that a lot of the cars -- which were supposed to have been divided between a Red Route and a Blue Route, so that at this point I would only ever have seen half of them -- had gone off down the wrong route due to inadequate signage at the split. At any rate only two cars out of the six or so they were waiting for ever turned up, and eventually after we had been there about an hour and a half or so they packed up, out everything back into their support vehicle, and drove off to the next rendezvous point with their supplies of spare water and oil. (Both of the cars that stopped came in for oil top-ups, which had to be introduced into each valve/cylinder in turn with an oil can, and one of them had a radiator leak -- the radiator being on the side of the seat, with the engine underneath it with a little door that opened at the back! -- and was visibly dripping water, which needed refilling.)
I had brought a flask of hot chocolate, but it was really an insulated water flask rather than a Thermos and didn't have an integrated cup; I hadn't realised this would be an issue until at this point I attempted swigging scalding hot chocolate directly out of the bottle! It was clear that I was going to have to drink it very, very slowly and cautiously, however chilled I was, so I told myself that I might as well stay until I had finished the flask, and if no more cars had turned up that would prove that it was all over and I could go home. At this point I had only seen about a couple of dozen cars in total, but we were only about six miles from the start of the race, which had started a good two hours earlier, and even a veteran car ought to have been able to cover the distance in that time. They must have all gone off down the other route.
I have no idea what had been going on, but for whatever reason, after a long gap and just as I was finishing my hot cocoa, more cars did come... and then more and more, in far larger groups than before. I had brought my camera with me but hadn't used it in my earlier 'embedded' position with the mechanics, as it seemed an intrusion when they had allowed me to hang around their work. This time I did get it out of its case and took a whole set of photographs. The best results were obtained by snapping the cars when they were halted at the traffic light, since even in 'action' mode the shutter release is so slow that I ended up with a lot of pictures showing the fronts and backs of cars just entering and leaving the frame :-p What I hadn't noticed, unfortunately, was that there was a van with fluorescent warning stripes parked immediately opposite my chosen photography spot, which meant that a lot of the otherwise good photos were completely dominated by this lurid object appearing behind the car and its passengers!
Luckily I did move around to several different locations, including multiple attempts at snapping the cars as they actually turned the corner (the passengers diligently hand-signalling the turn on the left-hand side). Most of the latter were missed shots since the cars were inevitably in motion at that moment, but I successfully got a couple of flukes. I also tried deliberately shooting into the early morning sun to capture some 'going away' pictures in silhouette, but the automatic exposure wasn't really up to it. (It wasn't coping very well in general with the mixture of low sun and deep shadow; the pictures on the whole came out grainy.)
However, I got a small collection of just-about-usable pictures: http://ivory.ueuo.com/Tower/Albums/Cars/index.html
In any case I didn't even attempt to photograph most of the cars as they passed. I wanted to be able to enjoy them properly, without being enslaved to a pinprick image in the viewfinder the whole time :-p
I was surprised to see quite early on a car with "GENEVIEVE" painted on its bonnet, and wondered if it could possibly be the 'real' Genevieve from the film, or whether someone else had just decided to name their car after the fictional one. But apparently it actually was the original Genevieve (although it had been renamed as such for the benefit of the film, having previously been known as 'Annie'!) which had been sent off along with its co-star at the start of the rally to celebrate seventy years since the film was released. It's a strange thought that at the time of filming, when it represented a deeply obsolete past, the car was 'only' fifty years old; it is now a hundred and twenty years old....