Shelsley Walsh Speed Hillclimb

I was back in the UK recently visiting the folks and no trip home is complete without a visit to the Shelsley Walsh Hillclimb. Shelsley Walsh is the oldest motor sport venue in continuous use in the world. First used in 1905, it is older than Indianapolis, Le Mans or Monza.

It's also the birthplace and spiritual home of Speed Hillclimbing, a sport I grew up on and a sport I absolutely love.

This weekend was just a 'club' event but as is always the case there was a fantastic array of machinery on display.
One of my favorites was the GN Spider, which looked just as rough today as when Basil Davenport used to race it here back in the 1920's .

photo courtesy of latphoto.co.uk

Apparently Davenport took great pleasure in shabby appearance of his race cars, especially when they beat the likes of Raymond Mays in the mighty Auto Union

Most of the cars at this event were classics, unlike the British Championship rounds which feature much more hi-tech, specialist machines such as the DJ Firestorm below, powered by an F1 Cosworth V8

Another pretty special car was this recreation 1954 Mercedes W196 Streamliner. The body is finished in bare aluminium, reputedly because the car was 5lbs over weight for a particular Grand Prix so Mercedes Stripped all the paint off it to get down to the weight limit.

The paddock at Shelsley is a wonderful place, you can walk right in among the cars, chat to the drivers and mechanics and get as close as you like.

Out of the paddock and a minutes walk up the hill, I found the Army, with perhaps a little less to do than they used to.

A bit further up the hill, and to the delight of my 2 yr old son we found this working scale model of a lotus 7. This car was built by a chap called Michael Roe, who has sadly passed away, but raced the full sized version of this car here for over 30years.

Out in the car park there were 100's of classic Mg's Healey's and Lotus's. This display of Cobra's caught my eye though.

As well as some very rare Aston Martins. No surprise that the little Cygnet is rare given the £31k price tag for what is essentially a Toyota IQ in an Aston Martin frock. The Zagato, even rarer at £330k!

Back in the paddock there were some very familiar cars. This immaculate Chevron single seater, powered by a Rover V8 has been successfully campaigned by Russ Ward for decades

Another common sight is Kim Johnson's MG Midget. This car was built for Hillclimbing by Kim and my Dad back in 1971 and is still going strong today. Note the rear mounted radiator (which is all the rage this year on the drifting scene!)