We, Tommy Sandham, and neighbour Brian Lee, drove my 1965 Cortina MK 1 G.T. from Land's End to John O'Groats in October 1999 in aid of Cancer Research. "Our car" raised around £600, with a combined total for all 11 cars entered of over £6,000.
The trip took 5 days (we did not go the most direct route) and we travelled 2,047 miles, average speed 43 mph and average fuel consumption of 28 mpg.
Here is a photo of us at Lands End... Brian Lee shelters from the cold wind at Land's End on Monday morning prior to the official photographs !
First stop Lanreath near Looe in Cornwall. We made this detour from the route to visit Terry and Beryl Gamble who sponsored us.
On Tuesday we visited the Ford Museum at Dagenham. Our car can be seen at the far away end of the line-up. Later there were some 15 cars in the line-up. Brian, closest to camera, chats with the official photographer.
A road-side stop just after the Humber bridge. Note the grey telephone kiosk. Hull have their own telephone system, distinctly separate from British Telecom. For the first part of the week it was so sunny I had to wear sun glasses to drive !
Another road-side stop. Brian has a drink and tries to decide if he needs to go to the other side of the hedge. By now we are settling down into the journey and have not had any serious problems... ! Tip: Always make sure your points have a gap !
Thirsk town centre. Tommy (in red anorak) holds a bag of goodies (manuals, parts books etc) bought in a bookshop in the square. We had a really nice meal here, before replacing a burnt-out spot-lamp relay. Tip: don't create short-circuits inside spot-lamps !!! Make sure wires are properly insulated ! (p.s. to that, we later found it was the Halogen BULB which was shorting. Never seen that before.)
A view from our hotel room in Pitlochry. At the bottom of the hill is a whisky distillery, hic, which Brian visited. By now we were tending to be first on the road. In some ways I regret this as we did not stop to visit certain sites. However, being the oldest car on the trip my excuse was we wanted to push on in case we hit trouble.
"Our room marked with an X " H'mmm. We had the little room at the top of the house, which gave us great views of the town.
There is a bit of camera shake, but the sign says 109 miles to John O'Groats. We are just north of Inverness on the final day. In the next few hours we were "flashed" a few times, and we discovered that the trip had been well publicised in local papers. This is actually a colour print, but the scanner keeps making it black and white !
Finished. Yippee. Brian poses on the start and finish line at John O'Groats on Friday just after lunch. We were first on the road, and signed in at the pub. It wasn't long before the others arrived ! (Brian thought he might be home by Tuesday night, not knowing if the car would make it or not !)
The official photograph. "Tommy & Brian 8th October 1999" Although Land's End is "only" 874 miles away, we covered over 1200 miles to get here. Don't look too closely at the paintwork... Thanks to Whitehead Electrical Engineers and all our other sponsors.
On the way home to South Wales we had some problems, which turned out to be a broken inlet manifold. (We only found the problem a week later.) On the way south we stripped the carburettor, changed points, cleaned fuel filters three times... all to no avail.
We drove for 19 hours to get home. From Glasgow we drove all night at 70 mph at which speed the engine was much smoother. We arrived home at 3.15 am on Sunday 10th October and woke the neighbours. Sorry Paul!
For a full account of the trip, read the MK1 Cortina Owner's Club magazine -- January 2000 issue.
Page last updated:- 03 October, 2006 15:28