Tuesday 17 August 2010

Fairthorpe Gathering 2010 report

Having had torrential rain and thunderstorms on Saturday, we were thankfully blessed with reasonably warm but windy conditions for the 2nd annual Fairthorpe Gathering at Stow Maries Aerodrome in Essex.



The aerodrome dates from WW1 but fell into disrepair once the Royal Flying Corps left after the fighting stopped. Russell Savory bought the derelict site several years ago and is now restoring it back to its glory days. Russell started by giving us an overview of the aerodrome's history and plans for its future, followed by a guided tour round the numerous buildings and explanations of their previous uses. Then all the petrolheads piled into Russell's business workshop (RS Performance) for a guided tour of the premises, which houses a number of highly tuned V6 and V8 engines currently being fitted into high performance cars for his customers.

Now, I guess most of you visiting this site want to hear about and see some pictures of Fairthorpes. Hopefully those of you that own ine in bits will be spurred on to get them out of hiding and on the road in time for next year's event!

We had an excellent turnout of twelve cars comprising:


The one-off Formula Junior racing car



Two Coventry Climax powered Electrons







Eight Electron minors


















One Rover V8-engined Pathfinder.


Several of the cars were immaculately presented, some were running restorations (mine included!) and special mention must go to Brian Townsend whose ground-up rebuild was there in its rolling chassis stage to show everyone what they are like `with their clothes off!'

A Ginetta G21 and a Jowett Jupiter also turned up, both driven by Fairthorpe fans.



The press turned up from Classic Car Weekly...


The day wouldn't have been complete without awards though. Best Fairthorpe was won by Rob Cobden`s Electron which he recently finished rebuilding ready for next season's historic racing campaign. The other award was for the furthest travelled Fairthorpe, which was hotly contested with three cars coming over 100 miles and all travelling within a total of 10 miles of one another! Rob walked away with that trophy as well. Rumours of him doing two laps of the airfield earlier in the day to bump the mileage up were unfounded!

The day was rounded up by Ron Welsh doing a couple of fast passes in a wheel spinning Junior past the 10 mile an hour signs....tune in later this week for the video of that.

Everyone was kept very well fed during the day with complimentary ham rolls, home-baked cakes, biscuits, and teas and coffees. Several of the cars were leaning noticably as they left at the end of the day due to the occupants' full stomachs (I would like to thank my lovely wife Sarah for the amazing effort that she put in to preparing the feast, it certainly went down well).


More pictures and some movies will be downloaded to the site over the next few days. and if you have any you would like to see featured on the blog please send them to me and I will put them up.


Now: next year's 3rd Annual Fairthorpe gathering will be on a similar date in August somewhere in the midlands to encourage some of the FSCC's more Northern UK owners to participate.

If you have a car in bits, there's no more perfect incentive to finish it up ready for its unveiling to club members next year. So go get stuck in!

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