DAY IN THE LIFE

National Motor Museum fundraiser Kaye Crouch

I am up at 6am every day to walk the dogs. We have Ted, a pure Patterdale Terrier – like a Jack Russell on steroids – and Wilf, a Border-Patterdale cross. I am always at work for 8am, but as an agent for NFU Mutual I spend most of my life out on the road visiting customers. I would say about 75% of the time I am out and about, then I tend to go back to the office to catch up in the evenings and then head home at about 8pm.

I know that insurance doesn’t have the most exciting reputation, but because NFU Mutual specialises in some quite unusual insurance, such as for hotels and country estates, it can be very exciting when I visit clients. Many of the high-net-worth ones have multi-million pound collections with Ferraris, McLarens and Aston Martins to the fore. Some are kept in controlled climates and some are even stored in vaults below sea level, but I can’t go into too much detail because of client confidentiality. Suffice to say, you don’t need to own a sheep or a cow any more.

Dealing with these clients is thrilling because I have always been a petrolhead. So has my husband, Gary. We met at 15, married when we were 19 and have had more than 50 cars between us. That’s the sort of number you couldn’t possibly have had if you’d also had kids, but it’s always been dogs and cars for us.

My daily driver is an Evoque because of the amount of time I spend going up and down farm tracks, but we have owned loads of MGs, Jaguars, a Celica GT-4 and especially Porsches. We have just sold my 968 Cabriolet and a 911, but it won’t be long before we have another – not least because we are still quite active in the club. We also have an Aston Martin V8 Vantage and a 1972 T2 Volkswagen ‘bay’ camper called Blodwen that we use for holidays

Although both our first cars were Minis, my parents were much more into motorcycles. My earliest motoring experiences were in a sidecar but, despite having been brought up in the New Forest, we have always had closer ties with the National Motor Museum rather than Sammy Miller’s motorcycle museum nearby. In fact, thanks to my uncle, Bill Grindey, being harbourmaster at Beaulieu and living at Buckler’s Hard, I have been associated with the museum since I was a baby. It’s what sparked my interest in cars. My first job was taking tickets on the Monorail when I was 16.

So I was really proud to be appointed chair of the Council of the Beaulieu 100 in July. The Beaulieu 100 was formed in 2012 as a sort of fundraising club, gathering together likeminded and similarly philanthropic people who are in a position to help support the museum. The membership is for 100 people and currently fluctuates at around 60, who enjoy a full calendar of events, many of them pretty special behind-the-scenes opportunities and social meetings. There’s no hard sell because if someone isn’t genuinely interested in supporting the museum in the long term, they are not going to be the sort of staunch ally that we are looking for.

As an example of the work we do, our annual gala dinner among the cars in the museum this year raised £7000. We have also used our funds to support the rebuild of the BRM V16 engine

184) and to bring together 28 Lalique mascots for the Luxury of Motoring exhibition.

My role in the 100 involves quite a lot of admin as well as attending events at Beaulieu and elsewhere, quarterly meetings, premeetings and so on. I deal daily with membership development manager Heather Jackson, who has had a fascinating life. She was born in Zambia to London- and Nottinghamborn parents with strong motoring connections – her father was a rally driver; her mother’s father worked on the Campbell family’s record attempts. This child of the Commonwealth was raised in what is now Zimbabwe, and then spent 20 years in South Africa before coming to the UK in 2008 and joining Beaulieu in 2016.

I will chair the council for at least a year – my predecessor did six – and Heather and I have given ourselves the joint mission of raising the profile and membership numbers of the Beaulieu 100. So much so, we hope, that its title will become a reality.

‘i have been associated with beaulieu since i was a baby. at 16 my first job was taking tickets on the monorail’