My Cotswolds road trip was a blast from the past
Lucy Denyer is a retro girl at heart, so despite the cold she jumped at the chance to drive a Triumph Herald convertible to the countryside for a relaxing break
Ilike to tell people, sometimes, that I am a Xennial, a little-known generational subspecies born between the late Seventies and early Eighties. The thing that defines us is having had an analogue childhood, but a digital adulthood. To me, this essentially means that, while the contemporary world is not completely alien, I am often happier with things from the past: telephones; computers (or, rather, word processors); machinery. My childhood often seems a golden age: simpler; more innocent; less scary – somewhere I would like to go back to.
Really, I would mostly like to live in a Richard Curtis film: one in which boy meets girl in a bookshop and calls her on the kind of telephone that has a curly wire.
Which is why spending a weekend driving a classic car to a beautiful Cotswolds village to stay in a gorgeous hotel with my beloved was basically all of this Xennial girl’s dreams come true. On paper at least (as long as he didn’t dump me, Daniel Cleaver-style). But would the promise live up to reality?
Admittedly, things got off to a marginally shaky start. The red 1964 Mercedes 230SL I’d booked for the weekend from the Classic Car Club London was, unfortunately, broken. Something about the throttle linkage having snapped (my love of all things old does not extend to in-depth knowledge of their workings). No matter, they had the perfect replacement: an equally lipstick-red 1968
Triumph Herald, named Gerald (of course). We swiftly made our acquaintance, which didn’t take long as Gerald is a basic beast: four gears (albeit with the racy addition of overdrive), one knob for heating, one for lights, one for windscreen wipers and a choke to get things going (plus two cigarette lighters: they had different priorities in those days). Four keys though, to lock the various different doors – that caused some confusion.
Still, once I’d worked out which one turned on the ignition, cued up the Bluetooth speaker lent to me for the trip (the original radio is barely compatible with modern broadcasts), tucked a travel rug over my knees and remembered how to drive a manual car, we were off.
And boy was it fun. Normally, I am to be found behind the wheel of your classic family wagon: a Volvo estate – automatic, safe, comfortable, mostly used for transporting small children about the place. It’s a lovely drive, but also quite easy to switch off in, bar frustrations in particularly obstinate traffic jams.
There was no switching off in Gerald, however. This was proper driving: sensing the right time to change gear, finding that sweet biting point of the clutch at a traffic light on a hill, giving the swift glance over the shoulder to pull out into another lane. Admittedly there were hairy moments: I had to resist the urge to counter-lean to keep all four wheels on the ground when taking a corner, and you do feel quite small and low to the ground in a Herald when an articulated lorry roars past you on the M4.
But it was a blast! As we chugged out of London, sunnies on, Frank Sinatra coming through the speaker (only appropriate), heads turned and middleaged men did envious double takes – when we put the top down on Sunday morning as we wended our way through the beautiful Cotswolds countryside to a pub for lunch it felt like flying. Bridget Jones had nothing on me in this particular scenario. Apart from anything else, I was the one behind the wheel.
And I have to say, if you really do want to feel as if you’re starring in a Richard Curtis movie in your dashing red convertible, there’s nowhere much better than Broadway. Chi-chi boutiques with delectable offerings (including, of course, a bookshop offering The Telegraph’s Matt cartoon annual and unpublished Letters to the Editor) and beautiful architecture. We even encountered a fox hunt, and were momentarily surrounded in our little red car by sternfaced men astride muscular horses. It was almost a cliché.
We stayed at the Lygon Arms, deservedly famous in these parts for its luxuriously welcoming atmosphere – all squashy velvet sofas, roaring open fires, newspapers scattered about the place and jolly, mostly Antipodean staff, urging us (not much encouragement needed) to order a glass of champagne or a locally made gin and tonic at every turn. We kicked back with a facial (me) and a massage (him) in the elegant little spa; stuffed our faces with a full afternoon tea and then stuffed them again about two hours later in front of yet another fire in the enormous barrelvaulted dining room, before flopping into our emperor-sized bed, popping open the complimentary champagne and chocs and – terribly vulgar – watching crap telly in bed before turning in for an early night.
Seriously – it was bliss. This is in some ways not the ideal time to escape for a weekend, but in others exactly what we needed the most. Handing Gerald back on Sunday evening was one of the saddest things I’ve done for a long time. I spent the next hour googling Triumph Heralds for sale. I may be a digital adult, but analogue does it for me every time.
My childhood often seems a golden age: simpler, and somewhere I would like to go back to
I had to resist the urge to counter-lean to keep all four wheels on the ground at corners