Casual Car Club (CCC) with the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts' Club (RREC) Polish Section, Warsaw, Poland: Just Get It Out and Spank It !

Click on photos to enlarge - far superior rendition

A few years ago, Clarkson, or Axel Rose as he is now known, put the question “Why don’t car enthusiasts just go for a drive like motorcyclists do?” This of course prompted him to get up in the middle of the night and take some flash Merc to Wales to give it a thorough spanking through the valleys. With this in mind I’ve told the wife that next year I’m having every other Sunday morning to go off for a drive or ride depending on the weather.

Then with the Indian summer we’re currently basking in and the fact I’ve got a few new toys in my barn I thought bugger it I’ll have a practice session now, as on last Sunday. But how to rally the troops? Easy, Keep It Simple Stupid, drop the sightseeing agenda and focus on the drive itself and while Poland is full of worthy sights of interest that other monument recognizable to all is McDonald’s, so that’s where we met in a gloriously sunny morning at 11am.

There are many benefits of using McDonald’s as a rallying point. Firstly, they’re everywhere so you don’t need a route but simply a destination. And secondly, and to my mind most importantly is that on a Sunday you can get the McBreakfast before 11am. This is important because as any biker will tell you a ride out needs to include a bacon roll and a cup of tea.

So with a simple agenda 8 cars turned up on time. A Merc 500SL, Mustang Mach 1, Austin Healey, MGA, Rover SDI 2000, Alfa Spider S3, modern E500 and myself in my old Nissan. Now there were a lot of nay sayers commenting that we’d all run into trouble with distraught grave attendees or we’d get side swiped by some grandad in his old Deawoo who’d be still worse for wear on the vodka. We had none of it, because I got knocked in the car park. Perhaps it was the brilliant white paint work of my old Nissan that blinded the old git, more likely it was those stupid wrap round sunglasses that some middle aged men wear in order to look 20 years younger. Who knows, who cares as not a mark was left on my car.

Off we go on what ought to be a simple route heading out towards Nieporet and then Modlin airport, however numerous traffic lights and round-a-bouts meant we lost half the fleet before we got to the Warsaw Riviera that is now Nieporet. Ian and I only realized this when we got to Maz. Dwor. Near Modlin so we headed back to the Riviera for coffee and szarlotka.

The roads were clear and offered some good straights with bends quick enough to justify dropping a cog and driving through but Ian had a near miss as he tried to overtake something just as the old farmer in his Deawoo pulled out onto the road.

Comments from the ‘rebels’ who somehow went to Modlin via the Bialystok road imply that they had a good run anyway which was what the objective was.

Neil Crook (Nissan Silvia 1.8 Turbo - not pictured)