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Oh, Dear, What can the matter be?

by Brian Shaw

      
 

Annie my RM saloon born in 1931 deserves a holiday for her 77th birthday, so it is off to Northumbria to see what this north east coast of our wonderful country is like.

Over the last 20 odd years me, Jean and Annie pick a county out and take our 1926 Angela Caravan for a well earned rest and explore a different part of our country/ We want an early start so set the ding-a-ling for 5 Saturday morning. Annie all checked over and loaded up, why is Jean's case always bigger than mine?

Decent weather for our early start and roads all quiet, never daunts us to use Annie even on long journeys just plan and set off with the knowledge it'll take a little bit longer.

We plodded on nicely stopping now and again to stretch our legs, no need to study the map as it was a straight forward journey up the Great North Road. Ain't this road altered a lot in my lifetime just to cope with the speed and volume of traffic but at our pace we could still take in all the scenery. Wetherby reached and we've clocked just 100 miles since leaving home in Melton Mowbray. Slight drizzle but nowt to worry about. Thirsk, Leeming Bar, Richmond and Catterick all pass by as we trundle ever northward/ Annie keeps getting smiles of other drivers and passengers as they speed past on their journeys.

Traffic wizzing past as we reach Scotch Corner, Annie's now clocked 140 miles, thinking we'd done the biggest part of our journey instead of relaxing we found Annie was losing power and struggling to keep going. The drizzle had now turned into proper rain, but we needed to stop so the next filling station loomed into sight and we were in.

Bonnet up and fiddling about just to make out to Jean I knew what I was doing, plug out turn her over and no spark. Checked and found the points had closed up. Where's my little box of bits?, "yes" under the fully laden back seat, after a struggle found my mag spanners and reset the points.

 

This was another lesson learned on a long journey with a warm engine the distributor spindle had gently worn enough off the heel of the points to close the gap. The spindle was dry so out with the dipstick "no' not me" and smear a drop of oil down the dry spindle and away we go again.

No further problems as we now pass the famous Angel of the North but volume of traffic as we pass Newcastle slows us right down to walking pace, a busy place. We now leave the A1 at the Morpeth turn to spend a couple of hours exploring this luvly little town. Not knowing where to park as we pulled up near the Market Square when the local flower holder said leave her here I'll look after her, she'll be safe. After summat to eat we left Morpeth and headed on the coast road to out B and B for the week at Warkworth just above Amble.