London To Brighton 2009
Our club held a raffle during the summer where the winner would be flown from the US to London, England to attend the London to Brighton rally. The South London & Surrey Land Rover Club (SLSLRC) holds this event every year and was nice enough to pick up our winner and host him for the entire weekend. The lucky winner was Jonathan Galpin. Here is his story.
The Carolina Rover Owners Club (CROC) held a raffle which I won! The prize was a trip to England to participate in the eleventh annual London to Brighton Land Rover Run (L2B) organized by the South London and Surrey Land Rover Club (“SLSLRC”). Now if you have been to the CROC's Uwharrie Safari, you would have seen these British blokes and their Tee-Pee tent that they bring with them at the Safari. These are members of the SLSLRC, and they kindly offered to host the winner of the raffle at their L2B event and to look after the winner during the entire trip.
So off I went, with my flight leaving the USA on a Thursday evening. I arrived at London's Heathrow airport around noon the next day. It is an overnight flight going there, but you must factor in the five hour time change. The UK is five hours ahead of us, so the actual arrival time was possibly 7am US time Friday. Can you say “night ride”?
Because I have been to England many times, I arranged with my host to meet them at the event start point, rather than have them pick me up at the airport and put me up overnight. I have family in England, so that night I stayed at a cousins house and met up with three cousins and their spouses for a great dinner near Clapham Junction in London.
The next morning I took a sight seeing trip through Kew Gardens, an amazing Botanical Garden with several huge greenhouses with plants from all over the world. One potted plant was potted in 1775 and is still going strong today!
After that, a good pub lunch with a pint of beer and it was on to the event.
Line em UP!!
The London Tube service (subway) is incredibly useful and gets one around to almost anywhere in London with amazing regularity. It seemed like I never waited more than two minutes for a train. I dragged my junk and TWO sleeping bags I borrowed from my cousin to the tube and in no time was at the “Crystal Palace”, an open area which is used for many events where some green space is needed. It once had a huge state of the art glass building erected in record time for a trade event showcasing the worlds innovations of the time around 1854, hence the name.
As you might guess, the tube being incredibly timely also spat me out just about at the event entrance, so it was a very short walk to the event where I met the hosts for the first time.
This is actually two huge events put on simultaneously by a small club of very dedicated people. The SLSLRC members have to run the London part of the event (Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning) and have to have the Brighton part of the event up and running at the same time Sunday morning. So at some point during Saturday evening, a large contingent of the SLSLRC members left the Crystal Palace grounds for Brighton where they would have to begin (at the crack of dawn) setting up the event space for the arrival of the crowd from London. Virtually every member of the SLSLRC club is given a job (or multiple) for the event. Once the crowd leaves the Crystal Palace, the members have to pack up and clean the grounds of the Crystal Palace, and again there is a cleanup exercise in Brighton.
At approximately 900 Land Rovers, this is a huge event. Apparently around 375 trucks registered to camp at Crystal Palace, and more would have registered on the spot. Beginning at 5am, the other trucks, called “runners” begin to show up for the 8am launch to Brighton. Runners come for the day, and do not camp.
Immediately upon arrival, I was made to feel like family. Bill Campbell, the club leader introduced me to everyone. I was given a spot in that same tee-pee tent that they brought to North Carolina. They gave me a “marshal” vest, empowering me with special Rover Event Manager privileges, and also I imagine to make certain I was not run over while there!
It was a fun evening, the weather was perfect, only raining once. I spent a lot of time looking around at the huge selection of rovers. By far the majority seemed to be the Series-Defender models, but there were rovers of every sort and vintage. The Land Rover factory had supplied one of each of the latest 2010 models, trucks even the dealers could not get their hands on yet. I spent much of my time using my “marshal powers” to commandeer vehicles or a good spot at a camp fire.
I met the “Flanders land Rover Club” (FLRC) from Belgium who happen to share the same acronym as my home club, the “Florida Land Rover Club” (FLRC)! We exchanged stickers and they gave me a bottle of club wine. Here is a picture of them.
The SLSLRC members have to run a tight ship, and they woke up to run the event at 5.30am! When I got up, there hundreds and hundreds of rovers (runners) lined up three across right around the Crystal Palace grounds. Breakfast was a “bacon roll” which is definitely a unique British thing to eat. If it is not greasy, it will not do!
My hosts arranged for me to leave for Brighton in the very first vehicle out the gate. This was no ordinary rover, is was a military Defender set up as a “snatch” truck (for quick in and out military operations).
The owner of the truck, Barry also owned six other military snatch trucks (plus a camel trophy truck or two) which were lined up in convoy behind us. We were followed by a large contingent of other Camel Trophy trucks. It was a little chilly, but with three t-shirts, two long sleeve shirts, one jacket and a marshal vest, I was fine.
It was helpful to have my own very large gun that I could train on anyone who might get in the way, ensuring that we reached Brighton. Barry's son George was in the back manning his own very big gun (our rear gunner -- we'll be quite safe now). The ride was fun, having no cab to impede our vision, and being backed up by our own platoon. When we reached Brighton, I suggested to Barry that we take control of the mayors office first, but for some reason, he wanted to hit the beach.
We arrived at around 10am, to find the rest of the SLSLRC crew all set up and ready to receive the nine hundred or so trucks that were coming down from London. Naturally they had a kitchen set up with a great cup of tea waiting and more bacon rolls!
Later, as the trucks rolled in I helped park some of them. Line em up!! To fit them all in, we had to park the trucks three deep in some places. All went smoothly. The weather was perfect, I even got a little sun burn! Bill Campbell had described the rain that was a feature of last years event. It was chamber of commerce British weather meaning that it had rained and rained and rained. Did I mention that it rained last year?
Happily, I must have brought some good weather with me, so it turned out to be a great day out. Once everyone had arrived from London, the event got under way. There were booths featuring rover related products, a singer and a place to pick up photos of your journey from the official photographer. After that came a prize giving for each “best in class” land rover (Is that possible with a rover? Is this that class where you have fallen off your seat because you are daft enough to own a rover?). Later, there was a raffle. Proceeds from the event were to help a charity called “Help for Heroes”.
When it was time to leave, I managed to convince my military escort to give me a ride down towards Worthing, not too far down the coast in the direction they were headed. Their destination was Bath, in South West England. I thanked my hosts and off we went, guns blazing down the sea shore, looking for the next town to conquer! That was riding in style.
I did not squander the rest of my time in England (thanks CROC!). After a few days in Worthing, I visited relatives in Taunton in South West England. There I had the pleasure of taking a walk with a Falconeer with his dog and Goshawk through some farm land while hunting for pheasant.
I visited the Salisbury Cathedral and Stone Henge during this part of my travels. After that, it was back to London to see yet more relatives and historic places.
Overall, I spent twelve days on this rover rally (excuse), and had I a great time. Sometimes it's cool to be a CROC!
Jonathan Galpin
Member, CROC and the FLRC