On the big 5 Ohh.. I received a Red Letter Day gift voucher and what better way than to spend it than down at the track. Rockingham offered a day of thrills in BMWs and Cooper S's and it's here I finally cemented my love for Mini's even though I'd owned one before. No limitations on this track day just an enthusiastic handbrake grabber in the passenger seat ensuring that I took the car back to the pits in piece piece. Other than that it was drive as fast as you want. The S certainly showed the BMW M 3 series cars how to tackle the bends and chicanes - I was suprised how nimble the S was and how lumbering the M3's were. After ten laps of sheer enjoyment I couldn't wait until I could find the money to own one myself.

Photo is of me at Rockingham but expanded using the Extrude and Accent facility in Photoshop Filters.

Even now 50 years on from its inaugural UK test flight Concorde still ranks as one of the greatest experiences of my life. It took me over a week to get there by sea but I returned from New York to London in just three and a half hours on a supersonic flight. After a cruise on the QE2, flights in helicopters around New York bay, a trip up the Empire State Building and dinner at the top floor restaturant of the ill fated World Trade Centre I can honestly say this was an experience worth waiting for.

Just waiting to board was an experience in itself - Caviar and Champagne in the executive lounge as the aperitif. Following boarding we were met with about a hundred huge leather aircraft seats arranged in pairs left and right the full length of the plane. No first and second class here - everything is first class!

The excitement at take off with the four huge Rolls Royce Olympus engines roaring and the cabin speed display nudging higher and higher towards the 1000mph mark makes for exciting stuff. This is an aeroplane that expands so much in flight (around eight inches) that the passenger compartment is mounted on rollers within the outer skin to allow for the expansion movement.

During the flight you get an opportunity to go up front to the cockpit and meet the crew. lnside is a massive array of gauges, switches and dials that immediately make you think you are sat in a Spitfire.Amazingly, there is a flight engineer supporting the Pilot and Co-pilot whose sole job it is to ship fuel around the wings and fuselage to maintain the centre of gravity and the correct attitude of the plane to the angle of flight.

Going Supersonic and going faster than the speed of sound is incredible and one of those things I will always remember. I'm now a full member of the Mach 1 club! 

Balloon Mania

In the 1980's I got hooked, for a short while, on hot air balloon flights and there was one local company based up in Kettlewell that was very popular. I was amazed how cool it looked and resolved to have a ride and encouraged Janette to have a go too. It was incredible to glide above the land a few hundred feet up, gazing down on the people, cars and animals below. Eventually we landed on Middlleham Moors a few miles away.

Having convinced my colleagues at work that we should all do it we took off late one afternoon for Kettlewell and arrived to help inflate the balloon. Weather conditions were good but as soon as we started to lift off a tremendous gust of wind threw us towards the vertical hillside which adjoins the take off site. The pilot pushed the burners to the limit to escape the impending collision and we disapppeared into the clouds above, in an instant. We were all relieved and settled back to enjoy the views once we had dropped back down below the cloud base. After a while it became clear that the weather had changed and we had to make an emergency landing on a farm track (or more exactly the ditch next to it) so ending our journey early. Although it didn't work out to be the pleasant quiet ride we had planned the incident certainly made for a good talking point over a pint in the pub later.