Goodwood Breakfast Club Thoroughbred Sunday 2016

A good Sunday morning should involve waking up late and breakfast in bed or perhaps if the weather is nice tea and toast in the garden. A gentle start to gentle day; unless you have something better to do.

This Sunday saw Nik and I (Harry) rising early, skipping breakfast to save room for a bacon roll, jumping into Nik's Jaguar XK120 OTS (Nicola) and heading to Goodwood for Thoroughbred Sunday.

If you haven't been to one of the Goodwood Breakfast Club meetings before you've been missing out. The Breakfast Club is your chance to amble around the historic motor circuit, eat bacon, see lovely cars and chat to likeminded people. This is a haven where you can safely discuss valve timing, octane ratings and alternator conversions without anyone glazing over or rolling their eyes at you. Better yet if you own a car which fits the theme you can drive (slowly) down part of the Lavant Straight, around Woodcote, through the chicane and park on the pit straight. All this motoring joy is free! Free to enter you cherished car and free to attend as a spectator.

We jumped into Nicola the XK120 (NKL 200), flicked on the ignition and away she went at first push of the starter. Nicola is a truly charming car which as earned a special place in the Twyford Moors family. She is completely standard, but for the fact she has been resprayed Ecurie Ecosse blue, and some would say she has seen better days. I however would use the word "patina". Mechanically the car drives fantastically, has always proved very reliable and just goes to show a completely standard car can be very usable.

An uneventful but enjoyable drive though the Sussex countryside saw us arrive at Goodwood Motor Circuit and directed in half way up the Lavant Straight. Last time I drove down here was at high speed in our XK150 race car and the temptation to push down on the throttle was hard to resist. Approaching Woodcote I was struck by just how huge this corner is. As you barrel down on this at full speed it seems very narrow indeed but at a more sedate driving speed it is positively huge. Having successfully hit the apex at 20mph we were directed to park next to a lovely E-Type.

Making our way around there was an extremely healthy turnout of classic Jaguars in amongst the other cars. As you can see from the photos many E-Types and XKs and it was nice to catch up with a few customers as we sauntered around. With an excellent bacon roll in one hand, coffee in the other and a much lighter wallet we entered the paddock area, past a collection of Teslas latest offerings to inspect what was on show. The wonderful thing about this even is the diversity of cars it attracts. A couple of my highlights were a green Wolseley 1100 parked next to an AC Aceca and coming across a friends fairly muddy looking Series 3 Landrover parked next to one of our customers XK150s. There was also a sunningly shabby looking brown/gold XK120 which made Nicola look concourse by comparison (see photos of patches of missing paint!). There were simply too many splendid cars to mention here but rest assured it is well worth a visit!

After a few happy hours of chatting, photographs and adding cars to my fantasy garage we were ready to set off home in search of lunch. Driving out through the crowds and past the cars and chatting to people as we rolled along at walking pace once again confirms what a wonderful atmosphere Goodwood has created at their Breakfast Club meetings. Another drive through the Sussex lanes and we had Nicola back home without incident and ready for another trip out at the drop of a hat. What a truly marvellous car and a great day out.