London to Brighton Run - 2009 by our Southern Correspondent.

Something for the weekend sir? Yes, I'll have Boris the estate for L2B please! (Not going to ask to borrow the Cooper don't want to push my luck!) With my own Clubman still not ready, Maddy had offered me Boris for this years Run. Nick and I reached Crystal Palace at 05:15 to find three rows of Minis lined up; stuck half way down line 4 we wouldn't be escaping quickly. After taking an hour to collect the run pack, the LSMOC Chairman wasted yet more time because he could not make up his where to hold the drivers briefing. Net result of all this chaos was that the run was an hour late starting. There was first a lap of Crystal Palace park in order to break the world record for the longest one - make car convoy.

Said convoy started OK but soon degenerated into an hour's wait in torrential rain as Minis tried to exit Crystal Palace. One Mini lost an exhaust, one or two others had wet electric's and when we did get on our way, it was mid morning and the traffic horrendous. I took a few diversions and going down the M23 / A23 I was passing a stream of broken down Minis, (Boris on the other hand had no problems at all).I took one look at the gridlock entering Brighton and took another diversion. I arrived at Maderia drive around half past twelve, found a good parking spot and watched cars coming in after me who'd been far in front of me at Crystal Palace.

To be honest, I didn't see all of the show because the weather began raining again, and by now I just wanted to give up and go home. Even the journey back took 4 hours. Quite honestly, this was not the best L2B I've done, LSMOC has just become to greedy and made the event too big. So a big thumbs down to the organisers, but a big thank you to Maddy for the loan of Boris.