Stock Car Racing, Floods and Folk!

Some time around fifteen years ago, I stopped going with Steve to Banger Racing at Bovingdon (former) airfield. Neither of us can remember why it stopped, but it probably had something to do with Steve finishing school and filling his life with a new set of things. But we'd been a good number of times, and loved every minute of it.

Chatting with him last week, we wondered if Bovingdon was still host to such meetings. Looking it up on the web, we found it wasn't, and hadn't been since 2008. However, we discovered that there is a stock car racing track in Northamptonshire, PR1MO International Raceway, and that's where we went yesterday. It turned out to be a far bigger site than Bovingdon, and the meeting was the second day of the European Championship, with races involving F1 and F2 Stock Cars and a formula they call "Rebels".

Formula 2

Rebels

It was a day of exciting driving, thrills and spills. The weather was good to us, and we both had a really good day out together. Just like the old days!

We left a bit before the end of the event. There were several hundred cars there, and we didn't like the idea of spending an hour or so getting out of one of the two small gates when the races came to an end. As it happened, that decision was wise for another reason... No sooner had we arrived home, than the heavens opened. It poured! And I wouldn't have liked to be at the races in that, or on the M1!

The last time it rained like that was five or six years ago. The, as this time, the road outside our house flooded. The flood water then ran down next-door's front drive. They have a problem with this, inasmuch as the drain gully at the bottom of the slope can't cope with the volume of water, and it runs under the garage door. The garage is used for storage, not cars.

However, there's still too much water with nowhere else to go except sideways along the front wall of their house, under the hedge and on along the front of ours. At this point, the level's higher than our airbricks, so we have to block them as best we can as the rush carries on to our side gate and down the passage, turning off under the fence onto our other next-door neighbour's patio, and onto her garden, where it disperses.

Steve, Naomi and I got sodden, along with Graham and Pat next door and several others from neighbouring houses. Graham's approach was to sweep the water at the bottom of his slope down the side passage of his neighbour on the side - with their approval! So we joined in the effort. The garage was saved from a soaking at least.

Jess spent the day at "Folk by the Oak", in the grounds of Hatfield House. Said the Maiden played on the Acorn Stage there last year, but this year Jess went with brother-in-law Eddie, purely to enjoy the numerous acts. The rain pretty much missed them. Grace and I drove out to pick them up, arrived too early and sat in the car in the dark, enjoying about forty minutes of Seth Lakeman, and a firework display. A good way to end an eventful day!