Warwickshire - 18 April 2009

For many years the English Midlands have been the heart of British motor manufacturing. In the early 1900s Austin opened their plant at Longbridge and later, when the MG Abingdon plant closed the MGs were made at Longbridge, along with Morris and the rest of the BMC fold.

With the demise of British Leyland the Longbridge site was eventually mothballed, wound down, sold off etc and many thousands of workers lost their jobs.

As tribute to this motoring heritage a “Pride of Longbridge” gathering is held at Cofton Park, just across the road from the Longbridge factory. So this Saturday there was a fairly significant gathering of Austin, Morris and MG cars from the 1920s to our sole representative of the latest 2008 model. Some were polished way beyond anything that they may looked like when leaving the factory, others had significant bodywork alterations, one had £3000 of additional lighting installed and some were simply family cars, grime and all.

Leaving the car aficionados we set off to revisit Coughton Court, last visited in October 2002. This time, with our HHA membership we were also able to visit the nationally renowned Walled Garden.

Next was a country walk from Shelfield Green and, for only the second time on these country walks, we got ourselves lost. We retraced our steps and drove to the pub at Wotton Wawen that we were supposed to walk past. Since most of the things to see on the walk were around Wotton Wawen we explored the area on foot and then enjoyed a pub meal before heading home.