DELWYN MALLETT
WHAT COULD BE MORE ROMANTIC THAN A HONEYMOON TRIP TO SPAIN IN A PORSCHE SPEEDSTER? DELWYN CELEBRATES 50 YEARS OF MARRIAGE TO THE LONG-SUFFERING CAROL
Mallett’s mental meanderings
Once again the chaos of ephemera that masquerades as the Mallett archive disgorged, for no apparent reason but appropriately on time, a long-lost memory-jogging gem. I was searching for something entirely different – to no avail – when the rather dog-eared photo below appeared from its hiding place. It shows my new wife and me departing in my Speedster for our honeymoon on 12 July 1969 – almost 50-years ago to the day at the time of writing.
We were heading for Estartit on the Costa Brava, in Spain. Before you recoil with horror this was before the massive explosion in tourism and expansion that has spoilt much of that part of the Spanish coast. Estartit was then still a small fishing village with no high-rise apartments, only a few hotels, and although it would be stretching the truth to describe it as idyllic it was still relatively unspoiled with lots of charm.
I had owned the Speedster for only a few months having sold my first Porsche, a 356A Coupé, to fund what then was my ‘dream car’. For a short time I owned both cars and as the engine in the Coupé was a Super 75 and that in the Speedster a ‘Normal’, I swapped motors before the sale. Remember this was long before the fetish for matching numbers reared its irritating head and I’ve now had four different engine upgrades in the Speedster!
Preparations for the trip consisted of chucking a few tools in the boot and, being devoid of side windows, packing a canvas cover to offer a modicum of security overnight. As an afterthought – and perhaps indicating a lack of trust in my 12-year-old sports car – I threw in a very small tent. Both would save the day, or more accurately the night, during our first ‘emergency’.
At the end of day one in France, a pattern began to emerge that has, I’m ashamed to say, persisted to this day. My wife wanted to find a hotel early for our first stop – I wanted to press on. Unfortunately, as Carol had predicted, there proved to be no room at the inns and the light was rapidly beginning to dim – as were my headlamps. Many miles in either direction from a town the Speedster’s battery decided to stop supplying energy to the coil and with our last bit of momentum I managed to bump onto the grass verge. For a while the silence was broken only by the odd tick of a cooling engine and faint sobs from Carol.
Not a good start to our honeymoon but the situation was about to get worse. Being late and on a country road there was absolutely no passing traffic to flag down for assistance (where do the French go after sundown?) so there was no
alternative but to bivouac. However, pitching a tent in pitch darkness is no easy matter, made even worse when what appeared to be solid rock beneath a few centimetres of soil sent several tent pegs ricocheting into the darkness. The attempt was abandoned, as was the tent. I broke the news to Carol that now the only alternative was to sleep in the car – news that did not go well as the absence of side curtains left plenty of opportunity for a passing bogeyman to reach in.
But wait! You may recall that I had also packed a canvas cover for the car, the rubber bungee cords of which, with considerable contortions, I managed from the inside to secure on the outside. We were now as snug as bugs in a rug, if not as comfortable. Think Speedster today and you will invariably picture the flimsy bucket seats that virtually every one now has, but many were supplied with the fully reclining standard seats, as fortunately was mine. Indeed, my seats had the so-called ‘wide backs’ that when reclined provided a reasonably comfortable sleeping platform. Comfortable, however, we were not.
Without ventilation the interior temperature soon exceeded sauna levels. Having retired fully clothed it now became necessary to jettison our outer layers, shoving them out of the car in the process. (Do not think erotic. This was purely a survival tactic.) After a number of fitful sweaty hours and unable to see watches in the absolute darkness I ventured a tentative peak out by releasing a bungee only to recoil in panic. ‘Carol. We have a problem!’
What had hours earlier been a completely deserted road was now sporting a traffic jam stretching out of sight in both directions. The annual lemming-like exodus to holiday destinations in which the
French still indulge had commenced. There was no alternative but to leap out seminaked, gather up our discarded clothes and get dressed as rapidly as possible.
To this day there must be hundreds of French citizens who at the anecdotal stage of a dinner party say, ‘Have I told you about the time we saw a British couple beside the road in an old Porsche who had obviously stopped for a bit of hanky-panky? It was a really funny sight.’
With a push the Porsche started and we motored on to several more breakdowns – but they’re tales for another day.
In the ensuing half century Carol has had to endure sleepovers, breakdowns and running out of fuel in many, if not all of my automotive indulgences. Abarth, Bentley, BMW, Mercedes and Tatra as well as many further unscheduled Porsche ‘delays’ have all at some point left us stranded. Remarkably I still have the same Speedster and even more remarkably, and far more importantly, the same wife. Happy 50th Anniversary dear Carol.
“DO NOT THINK EROTIC. THIS WAS SURVIVAL…”