International Mini Meeting '99 / Mini 40th
'Become, Be or Acquire'

Monday 16th
Again I have no idea at what time I got up that day. I do know it was well before 12pm, the time we were supposed to have cleared the camping-grounds though.
Andy and Arnoud had already left by then for a tour of Witney base; the factory of the BHMC.
After doing my out-in-the-open-washing-thing again (called roughing it :) and packing things up I was ready to go. MTB had already left by that time, so Carl got to ride with me again and did so most of the rest of the week. First stop we made was at some services on the motorway to get some decent breakfast and coffee.
With nothing planned for the day we took a look at the map to see where what was and decided to drive down to Braishfield, the starting point for one of the events on Tuesday, and set up camp there together with the other.

Break-up	Carl says Bye to BHMC

By then it had started to rain quite heavily, so much so that at one point the Mini had trouble finding the road between all that water. Amazing how bad (some ?) English roads can handle these floods of water, given the amount they get every year. We got to Braishfield, partly using backroads, and found that Arnoud and John & Yvonne had already set up camp there before leaving for the Witney tour. So we pitched the tent next to theirs in one of the dry spells.
We had planned to go see Stonehenge, a tourist-trap neither Carl nor I had ever seen, but with the bad weather decided to postpone that till the next day, as that day's first event was taking place only a couple of miles away from there.

		Witney
Arrival	Display	Scale	Unfinished	Shells
More Shells ?	Stock	More Stock	Rear Panel	Workshop
Front Panel	Spot welding (something for Scott ?)	Side Panel	Front Wing	Another Side

Instead we went over to Dave (GT-Dude), who lives closeby, for tea.
By the time we had finished the second cup (of coffee actually :) the weather was clearing up a bit and Dave's neighbor Jason came over to help him installing the new Halogen headlights. With two extra Miniacs at hand, what could go wrong ? Not much actually, it's a fairly straight forward job, although we didn't quite get why they introduce that many new connectors into the play; only more places where things might go wrong. After another cup (or two ?) and conversation which surpassed Mini-talk, we walked down the road to the local pub 'The Hinton Arms' to have some dinner. Now there's something you have to understand about the English... They serve some good food in bars (called pubs, short for public houses), but these close at 11pm. So most of the time the kitchen closes at least an hour before that (with all the cleaning needed to be done), which means that after 9:30pm you might have a hard time finding any place to get a bite to eat...
The good thing about local pubs is that the owners are often prepared to go the extra mile, so even though we were a bit late, we still could get whatever we wanted.
Carl ordered no less then two main courses and again enjoyed it thoroughly; they can make some good food there.
The rest of the evening was spent in pleasant conversation. Although most of the subjects during these Mini-events tend to revolve around the Mini, a lot of Miniacs (fortunately) have a bit more to report than merely Mini-talk.

After dinner and another cup at Dave's place we drove back home to the campsite. Well, we sort of did a small, unplanned tour of the region first. ('Was this the road we came by ? No, I think it's that way'). At the site Andy, who had had 'some elctrical problems' in the pissing rain, and MTB had arrived and set up camp too. Since the bar had closed a while ago everyone had already gone to bed. That didn't stop Jan-Willem (Also called JW, or John during that week) to help us inflate the air mattresses with his electrical pump, which blew a fuse in the action I think :) Being the deep sleeper that I am my lights went out while doing some pillow-talk with Carl. He had more trouble getting to sleep because of the loud noises made by an owl and a deer walking by in the distance :)