The weekend of 26th September saw a few of us reverting to our childhood and playing with toy cars once again, in the event that was the Kings Lynn Plus Scalextric Challenge. Kings Lynn Group were joined by some friends from other groups from various places around the country for an evening of mayhem!
The venue for the racing was Electric Tracks Ltd of Spalding, where they have permanent layouts of several well known UK and European racing tracks. We were giving a quick run down of the rules of the centre; 1. no running, 2. no climbing on the track tables, 3 no drinks in the racing area; and then we started racing – 4 cars on each track, with 4 tracks out of 8 in use at any one time – 8 minutes per track to complete as many laps as we could.
I am certain that rule 3 was adhered to, rule 2 very nearly not, by those of us with short arms who couldn’t reach their cars when they came off the track, and rule no 1 was virtually impossible to stick to! When your car has just careered off of the track into the barrier, and you are only seconds behind or in front, its very difficult to walk, not run, to the point where your car left the track, put it back on and walk, not run, back to your controller!!
All of this caused much hilarity, with people (and cars) all over the place, and a lot of unintended exercise by the less careful drivers, particularly on the Donnington Park track which was around 15 foot from one end to the other! At the end of the evening the number of laps were added up, and a very close result was achieved. The winner was Stephen, Chris from Brentwood came second, and third place was shared by myself, and Matt fom Sollihul group.
It was then back for some food and liquid refreshment at The Blue Bell pub at Whaplode St Catherine (in the middle of nowhere!) where the staff did us proud by serving us up an excellent meal at gone 10pm at night! This was actually a temporary home for the weekend for myself and Stephen, Chris, Iain from Fareham, and Matt and Rob from Sollihul, as we had pitched tents in the overflow car park on Friday night, and already enjoyed the hospitality, and locally brewed beer, of the pub the previous night. We had spent the daytime hours of Saturday wandering around the town of Spalding, visiting a historical building and gardens, and playing boules (non-flashing, or at least switched off!) in the pub car park.
After keeping the staff at the pub up long past their bedtimes, the campers returned to their tents, and before traveling home the next day sampled the delights of the English Breakfast at a local truck stop type cafe.
Everyone who attended said they really enjoyed the event, so maybe we are looking at a repeat next year, to be open to anyone nationally within Plus who wants to join us – we might even manage to give away a trophy or prizes next time, who knows!
Christine T
"Matt was a little worried to see Chris had found the home video footage which he had forgotten to delete....."