Great British Sportscars visit Sat 19 March

[Julie Hall - WSCC AO Representative]

Meet at MacDonalds on the Ollerton roundabout at 9.30am. It's a short journey from there to the GBS factory where they are very kindly supplying coffee and biscuits, no mention of any cake mind!

 

Take your wallets because the Kit Spares shop is open too.

 

We are scooting straight off afterwards though as we have booked a holiday cottage for the week.

 

Russ, we will give your house a wave as we drive right past it to get to Ollerton

 

If you are coming later we will see you there, but who is coming to meet us?

[TAFKARM]

Sorry Julie I'm in Liverpool this weekend - hopefully it will be a regular event though 

 

Have fun!

 

(Can you pop in an feed the cat?)

[AndrewBClarke]

Planning to come but will meet you there - you are coming from the wrong direction to meet up!

[Martyn Vann - Warwickshire AO]

We will meet you at McDs on the Ollerton roundabout.

[TAFKARM]

Struck down with lurgi so romantic weekend away cancelled. If I'm feeling a bit better, I'd like to come along. 

[Julie Hall - WSCC AO Representative]

Oooh, over 24 hours with no internet, I feel deprived. 

 

ABC - yes, see you there, bag the biscuits if you get there first!

Mart - yes, see you at McD's, it will be an inferior breakfast to what you are used to though!

Russ - yes, can we call for you? I promise to make a lot of noise and wake the neighbours up!

 

It's good practice for next week because when I leave you on Saturday lunch time I won't have internet access for a whole week, gulp.

[TAFKARM]

Yes that's fine Julie. (Not the noise bit!)

[Martyn Vann - Warwickshire AO]

Well it was 8am and 6^oC with patches of drizzle to start off with but traffic was very light so it was a great early morning drive to the meeting point at Ollerton, especially so as my new heated gloves (birthday gift from Sue) were doing a good job of preventing numb fingers  . Julie and Glen were already there with Russ when we arrived. After some refreshment and general discussion we decided to follow some of the GBS Zero cars we had spotted passing and head off to the GBS factory. Andrew and Claire were already there holding up the Westfielders tradition of getting stuck into the tea and biscuits! So it was even stevens with four Westfields and the same number of Zeros (not including those in the workshop) however the number of Zeros grew to more than a dozen with a smattering of Robin Hoods and a Tiger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were some very good examples of the GBS Zero on display including this supercharged MX5 engined car.

 

 

Also this Honda S2000 engined car.

 

 

The tour of the workshop and machine shop were very interesting, the CNC machines were busy turning out brake calipers and damper components. We were surprised at the amount of parts that they manufacture on site, brakes, dampers, throttle bodies and all manner of general parts for the Zero. The chassis fabrication and fibreglass/carbon fibre parts are also manufactured by GBS.

 

Overall it was a very interesting day and well worth the visit. We extended our thanks to the Staff at GBS for their welcome and of course the tea, coffee and biscuits!

 

We all went our separate ways at around 12.30pm, leaving Sue and myself to uphold the Peak District honour by cruising back into Matlock Bath to park in amongst the bikes and get a spot of lunch. We then had a good run through Via Gellia, past the quarry and the Bentley Brook, down into Ashbourne and out to Ca**ington Water for tea and cake. After stopping at our daughters on the way home we headed out for the 30 minute run home to find my gloves had run out of heat   though my hands did remain warm until we finally put the car back in the garage at around 10.15pm after a good Westfielding day