Overtaking 3 Caravans Enroute To Southsea

The car that was used for nearly all of the old school road trips was a W registration Vauxhall Astra. It was biege in colour with 2 red front wings, a Public Enemy Flava Flav clock hanging up on the rear view mirror to let you know "what time it is" and a Ice Cube poster on the inside roof lining. This would be a car that could breakdown wherever and whenever it fancied and trust me it did just that. Not many motorway hard shoulders was left untouched. I Could say it had a Herbie type of atmosphere to it, with anything going on with it, Mind Of It's Own, like one time it broke down on the way to Hastings in the middle of the night and in the middle of some pitch black dark country lane, It just decides to stop. Just Like some airlines, they carry their own engineers onboard just in case, The same applied to Bearwood BMX :) we used to have Brother Colin with us, he was a true brother and our very own "on the road mechanic" :). He got us out of some scrapes when we used to break down, Ok so we broke down going to Hastings on this dark lane, we had no torches or anything that would lighten up the engine bay. We waited for a while and kept on trying to start the car but we was not having much luck at all, you could smell the fuel because the car was flooding after we kept trying to start it, these was the days of manual chokes, after a while we gave in and had to call the RAC out. No mobile phones back then either, we had to walk to find a phone box in the pitch black, Leaving Bearwood Tom asleep in the car, after a while we found a phonebox, and when they asked our location, did anyone of us know where we was, NO. I told them we are on our way to Hastings :) but that was of no help to the RAC operator. We finally found out where we was and then we let them know our location, Someone is on there way out to you I was told. Proper chuffed I was, we head back to the car and then the RAC Mechanic came to our rescue not long after, it was like a franchise company on behalf of the RAC, you could tell the guy had just not long got out of his bed and quite rightly so, at this god given hour you could say he needed his sleep, he asked what had happended and we explained to him that the car just cut out and stopped. The mechanic sits in the car and turns the key in the ignition and you know what, the car starts first time like it would of, when it was brand new, you could tell he wasn't too happy but believe me I was happy as you could be that we would be back on the road soon. It was a draining experience driving the boy's about because chaos, laughter, and just point blank madness all rolled into one, that would drain you out after 7+ hours of being on the road but loved every second of the trips. The title heading 3 Caravans, was when we was going to Southsea for the King Of Concrete, and a few day's prior to leaving for Southsea, the exhaust manifold cracked on the car, I tried everything to locate one from scrapyards, but I was having no luck, Colin in the end, done what he could and welded the crack the best he could, We knew if we was too make it to Southsea and back we had to drive slowly all the way there and back. Truthfully it was a rare situation if we ever made it to 70mph, the car was capable of them speeds but the passengers was not, and that was exactly what we did, we hardly used any fuel and made it from Birmingham To Southsea on less than quarter of a tank of petrol, and we only managed to overtake 3 caravans all the way there and that was on downhills. It took hours to be fair to reach Southsea, some a little worse for wear than others, but it was a great journey nevertheless with Bob Marley playing on the car stereo and The Safri Boys being practised vocally by all for most of the trip. MUCH PEACE AND BLESSINGS TO EACH AND ALL. BEARBMX