New Year’s Day meets

While it’s lovely to have a bit of downtime over the Christmas break – assuming you’re in a job that allows such an indulgence – there tends to be a lot of sitting down and eating and drinking too much. By the end of the Christmas week, most of us are champing at the bit to get away from the telly and the in-laws, so what better solution than to fire up the old motor and hook up with like-minded people at a New Year’s Day classic car meet?

Some NYD events, such as Brooklands’ Classic Gathering (pictured right), are so massively popular that they’re more like one-day festivals. That’s why it can be more satisfying to visit a smaller, more intimate meet that’s closer to home, where the classics will mostly be owned by locals and may include all kinds of off-beat machines. Whether it’s an ancient tractor or a pre-war fire engine, chances are you’ll see it at a village or small-town New Year’s Day meet.

However, by far the biggest attraction of the local NYD gathering is that it will invariably be held outside a pub – and the quality of the boozer has to be the deciding factor in whether you should attend. Not for the beer, or even for the food, but because good pubs attract interesting people. Fact.