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Spotmog Christmas Party at Stanbrook Abbey Hotel 13 Dec 2025

Mildenhall / Ely Tour 5 – 12 Sept 2025

Gloucester Retro August 25

Spotmog Summer drive and picnic – Atwell Wilson Motor Museum Calne SN11 0NF

A reverie by John Hancock of the visit
Its July, its hot and it must be the car, airport and the museum. No, not the Alfa, Heathrow and the Uffizi but the South Cotswolds. We drove across the scorched grain plains of Clarkson to arrive at the sad, sleeping Cotswold Airport. No passports, queues or security checks. Instead, the free car park, the silent runway, a distant scene of dozens of dead or dying jet liners docked forever and ready to donate their vital parts to needy partners

Suddenly, like an alarm clock, the silence vibrates to signal the arrival of friends, who are full of stories of wrong turns, absent signs, road works and the need for coffee. It’s all chat, maps and the loo. The leader breaks the silence, time that has stood still, time for take-off.

For half an hour they follow long worn lanes of Wiltshire, through romantic, rhapsodic villages where Le Carre, Christie, Waugh, Betjeman and Lee reflect the high hedges and hidden lounge, dinner table, library, butler, tennis court and village pub. A run with a dried ford, the village church, the empty school, tunnels of trees, disused bridges and almost no people.

Around the bend at last it’s the main, congested road and into the destination of low storey treasure caves. Drilled into straight lines the weary quit to stroll to the land of the volunteer, where coffee urns don’t work and all the exhibits sleep. It’s quiet but one hears ‘This was my first car when I was seventeen’, ‘I learnt to drive on a 4/44 with a column change gear stick!’, ‘side valve and starting handle in winter’, ‘my father drove one of these and we used to go to France in it, can you image it?’, ‘we went on our honeymoon in one of these’ and there, standing around enormous white and chrome giant Chrysler American soft tops , elegant ladies dream that they might have been married in such a vehicle.

Its time for tea in the shade of a sycamore tree. Time for the Tupperware sandwich (slightly crushed), the reliable pork pie, the ladies’ salad, dangerously explosive tomatoes, Welsh cakes, lemonade and lukewarm tea. In a rough circle they chat. They remember past picnics, future celebrations of 40 years motoring, the day it rained, snowed, hailed and the wind blew. The new member marvels at the intimacy of the friendships that have been built over years of haps and mishaps, successes and traumas. Then it’s over.

It’s time for home. The imaginary nostalgia for events ha a new catalogue entry and ‘is there honey still for tea?’.

John Hancock

My thanks are due to Martyn and Jill Harwood and the Spotmog friends who made this reverie possible.

Tour to the Somme, Laon Historique and Champagne June 2025