Hold onto your hats!

I finished the proof-reading of the information for the exhibition display boards which need to go to be printed next week. Then I went to meet C., the chair of Stroud Preservation Trust, to check that she approved all my suggested changes, after which we both took the results to the designer, who only lived about five doors away from her.

I left them to finalise the layouts and decided to head further up the Slad valley for a walk with my camera. I expect you have heard of it as the setting for Laurie Lee's novel, 'Cider with Rosie', and I expect it has changed very little since Laurie last saw it in the 1990s. His wife still lives in the village.

I parked in a lay-by a few hundred yards south of the village, near to where some friends live in the wooden chalet where Laurie Lee once lived in a sloping beech wood, at the edge of farmland. I walked back down the valley to examine some interesting pollarded trees at the roadside, which have sadly been left to grow for rather too many years now. I'm sure it must be the expense of hiring tree surgeons to work on the steep slopes beside and below the road, which ascends the valley.

Then I turned round and walked towards the village taking pictures of majestic views across to Swift's Hill, a nature reserve and SSSI. Then came the large beech and mixed woodlands that are found on the higher steeper slopes above the grazed fields, and the various isolated old cottages and mansions which dot the valley.

As I neared the village, I thought of having a pint in the famed Woolpack Inn, until I realised I had left my money in the car. But I pressed on round a corner into the shaded area behind the lee of the hillside to have a look at a piece of land that my friend has been in dispute about.

As I neared the gate to it, I heard the loud and prominent sound of a car driving hard down the valley towards me. I turned round to see it approaching out of a tunnel of trees, and had no time to change any of my camera settings which were set for brilliantly lit landscapes. I just pointed and clicked as soon as I saw that it was an interesting old car. Just after I took this picture I heard the sound of a hand squeezed car horn and cheers and laughter from the passengers who waved vigorously at me. As you can see they were having a great time. I expect they had just left the Woolpack.

I've just searched online for the car number thinking it might be quite a rare vehicle, which it is: a 1926 Bentley 3 litre.


About this vintage Bentley
This speedy 3 Litre car left the Cricklewood factory in May 1926 as a Speed Model Vanden Plas Tourer Body.

In 1936, the car was acquired by the Hood family in the West Midlands. In that year the car suffered from a broken conrod which opened up the opportunity fo fit a 4½ litre engine. The car remained in the Hood family for almost 60 years, Mr Norman Hood, the son of the original purchaser, commenced a rebuild in 1962 to the style it is today.

Built in the true Bentley ethos of competition and endurance, this car has an outstanding record, finishing 1st overall Liege Rome Rally 2001, 2004 and 2005. 1st Emerald Classic. First in BRC Cornbury Sprint 2006, and 1st in Class 2007 Rally des Alps.