2007 GTA Members Travel
to the UK

Former Englishman and GTA member Kevin Bowen has made other winter trips to England for a long weekend.  One of the events to see is the International Triumph Vendor Show in Stoneleigh just a two and a half hour drive north of London.  Prior to my retirement last year, I was unable to fit the trip in my schedule.  This year, I decided to make the effort to join Kevin and Russell Sanders.  As most of us know, individuals need to lead, follow or get out of the way.   Kevin is the leader type and his style leads one to believe that his employees in Tampa either like him or don’t and nothing in between.  His planning made this trip enjoyable despite the weather and disappointment.  Kevin begins the schedule months ahead of time and includes a selection of hotel and reservations with reasonable prices.  He made 2 car reservations to avoid getting one not to our liking.  He researched the Internet and selected attractions besides the show.  As an aid to navigation, he had printed Map quest directions for each day’s travel.

We traveled to London on Wednesday leaving Atlanta at 5:30 PM.  Going east, we had a tailwind and the trip was about 8 hours arriving in London around 7 AM (2AM EDT).   We got the Van over the full size sedan and began our drive to Kenilworth …… in the snow!  It appeared that we arrived in England during the worst snow in 10 years.  This was not good, since Kevin had made reservations to drive the single seaters at the famed Silverstone Racetrack just half the distance to Kenilworth.  Driving on the left side of the road in the snow and dealing with the excess number of signs at the roundabouts was stressful.  Even though Silverstone was not on the schedule till Friday, we decided to drop by and check their schedule.  Prior to leaving Atlanta, they had told Kevin that they seldom canceled business because of weather.  We arrived at the track in blowing snow and about 8 inches on the ground.  As we expected, they had cancelled the schedule for Friday and were told that Saturday would be the next possible opportunity to drive on the track.  As we would learn later, that part of trip would not happen.  Check out the website for Silverstone Racetrack in the UK and see what we missed.  (http://www.silverstoneracingclub.co.uk).

*** The complete article can be found at the GTA news section or in the latest March GTA newsletter. ***