Well, a week is a long time in rally planning! The headline news is that I have not been able to reach agreement with the BOC regarding suitable catering for our traditional Saturday evening BBQ, so I have arranged with the Shutters in Gotherington to expect an influx of thirsty and hungry punters on Saturday evening, with overflow, if needed, at the Royal Oak at Gretton. There will be catering and bar service at Prescott during the day and I will sort refunds for everyone who has paid for the evening do.
The reason for disappointing those who have already bought tickets requires an explanation. The situation goes back to last year when Ciaran Mac Cana, the owner of Exemplar Solutions who had catered Prescott for many years felt that he had been put in an impossible contractual position by the BOC and walked out. Apparently, the new team running the BOC had not realised that Ciaran owned all of the kitchen equipment (some hundred thousand pounds worth) plus the bar, tables and chairs and so on. He took it all with him. The upshot is that the club is scrambling to provide contract caterers, but even the caterer at VSCC Prescott last weekend has handed in their notice – for reasons I won’t go into here. This week, the new caterers for PWP provided via the BOC a very simple menu for Saturday night – basically a burger or chicken with few trimmings and asked for an additional £3-50 for an ice cream tub! Compared to the massive spread that Ciaran traditionally provided for us, including a wide range of meats, vegetables, salads, breads and desserts, I felt that I could not take £22 per person for such a simple menu. The problem is compounded by the fact that the BOC was going to take a 30% cut, which meant that the caterer would only have received £14 of your money, hence the basic menu. I do charge £22, so ‘make’ £2 per ticket for my trouble, but I also pay the £600 for the band and their BBQs and beer, so I actually offer the evening at a considerable loss anyway. Moreover, the BOC required me to deal with them and not the caterers directly and required payment in full to them by 1st September which precluded late ticket sales or sales on the day, as had been accommodated by Ciaran for many years.
I hope that the catering situation at Prescott improves by next year – we’ll just have to wait and see. So we will hold the awards ceremony by the start line, as we used to do in the past. I expect the bar to remain open for some time after the hill closes. I will certainly be ready for a pint.
Regarding BBQ refunds, I propose to refund all those who paid by PayPal, through PayPal and all those who paid by cheque or bank transfer I will reimburse with cash on the day. Please let me know if this arrangement causes any of you a problem.
Next - marshaling. After over 60 rollovers to next year, the Draft 1 marshaling plan was shot to pieces, so this week I prepared and circulated a new draft to all who have generously volunteered to help out for an hour or two. Please, if you received that e-mail, respond to confirm your slot if you have not already done so. And also please note that the FREE BEER chits for every volunteer that were to be legal tender at the Clubhouse will now be honoured at the Shutters in the evening!
Tickets. All the tickets for entries received up to last week were posted across to John Hicks last week. They arrived on Tuesday and he posted them on to everyone yesterday. I have posted about ten more sets directly from Seattle over the last few days, and John now has plenty of spare tickets and will post them on for any entries that arrive from now. Please check your tickets carefully when you receive them and make me aware of any screwups!
Regarding test-and-trace, MSUK licenses and pre-registrations with the BOC, I am not going to worry any more about any of this. We now know that we can all give our contact numbers on arrival for T&T, can fill in simple paper forms on the day for registration and MSUK license applications and I really don’t have any more time to waste on this pointless exercise. Go get your licenses and pre-register and send in your contact details if you wish, or sort all on the day.
In other news this week, Jayne and I have had so much trouble with Delta/Virgin that we have re-booked our Seattle-London flights with BA and hope to move our Delta/Virgin booking to next July if we can. We were holding direct tickets from Seattle to London (after four changes since early 2020), but there are no Delta/Virgin flights from Seattle to London right now. We could not get any sense out of Expedia, through whom we booked regarding possible re-routing through JFK and Delta/Virgin wouldn’t talk to us as we hadn’t booked through them! With time ticking away fast, and reading numerous horror stories on social media posted by others who had booked transatlantic flights with Delta/Virgin and been abandoned at the last minute, we were not prepared to wait to see what happened. BA is flying daily from Seattle to London and I have confirmed this by watching FlightRadar24 and actually seeing the flights arrive and depart every day.
We have also sorted our pre-departure Covid tests and day 2 tests in England, and now just have to fill in our UK Government Passenger Locator Forms and sort our pre-return testing. But at least we won’t have to quarantine now.
But enough of the sausage-making! I am very pleased to say that the last couple of clue stops have fallen into place this week for the Sunday Navigation Rally so I have been able to finalize the Tour Handbook and nav rally clue cards. Likewise for the Friday Scenic Tour and Weston’s visit. This is a full day’s run and completely FREE (apart from the Weston’s tour). You can find the current list of Friday entrants at
http://prewarprescott.com/?page_id=547 (third link down) and I’m printing a few spare Tour Handbooks, so if you are not on the list and would like to be, just let me know. There is no booking form – and NO need for MSUK licenses! And I can now e-mail the final version of the Handbook to anyone who chooses not to start at Prescott on Friday morning, so you can join anywhere along the route. The Handbook returns you to Prescott, but of course, you can jump off wherever you wish.
A word about the Alvis Centenary Cavalcade up the hill in the lunch break. It turns out that the BOC now has to put all this through MSUK as an extension to the event permit – providing car details, driver and passenger details (including MSUK license confirmation). Also, there is a limit of 25 cars in the cavalcade, but we already have 31 Alvises entered so far. I have delegated the cavalcade organization to Anthony McGarel-Groves of the AOC to liaise with the BOC, so if you are an Alvis entrant, you should be contacted by Anthony shortly.
What else? I now have a time for the Spitfire – 1419 hours. We don’t yet know which one it will be (they have a choice of five – how many can say that?) and I will know which one has been allocated to us nearer the day. But I do know who the pilot will be. It will be Sqn Ldr Mark 'Suggs' Sugden, currently a fighter pilot on the Flight – his weekend secondary duty. His current primary duty is as a Deputy Flight Commander on 11 Squadron, RAF Conningsby, operating the Eurofighter Typhoon. He will be taking over as OC BBMF as his primary duty at the end of this display season in October. He’s going to call me two days beforehand, at which time we will know which Spit he will be bringing.
After receiving an informative article from the Cotswold Canals Trust (who will have a display at Prescott this year for the first time), the Commemorative Programme is now complete and ready to ship off to our printers in Cheltenham – another big job ticked off. All entrants of pre-war cars will receive a free copy at the gate. At 56 pages with a host of interesting articles, it is a VMR Magazine on steroids. Copies will be available to all others on the day for £3 each.
Entries and spectator tickets for Pre-War Prescott and all of the other weekend’s Summer Rally activities remain OPEN and we can now also accept entries and spectators on the day – simply turn up on the day and pay at the gate. Enter at
http://prewarprescott.com/?page_id=161. But if you enter in advance, you receive a free climb. Right now, we should also have a few spare climbs on the day. Come and find me early!
Now a word about VSCC Madresfield. This is a truly wonderful annual day of gentle driving tests along the drive of Madresfield Court in the shadow of the Malvern Hills. It is held annually and this year will take place on the Sunday after PWP – 26th September. That means that Jayne and I will still be in England so we will be able to bring the Minor tourer. There is no charge for spectators (although you are encouraged to buy a programme on the day to help cover costs) and you DON’T have to be a VSCC member to come along. Bring a picnic and join Jayne and I on the day.
Finally for this week, Tony Gamble tells me that his incredible ex-Halbe Tjepkema 1929 Minor fabric saloon is still for sale. Halbe effected a meticulous and highly accurate ten-year mechanical and coachwork restoration of this ‘time capsule’ barn find and so it has to be tremendous value at just £10,750. This car also features in Register Ramblings in M 130 – attached. You can follow the restoration of this car on our Forum. Contact Tony if interested. Buy it and bring it to Prescott!
Cheers until next week, do come back to me with any questions or concerns and as John Hicks is always advising me, keep taking the pills!