Memory Lane 27

September 2025. Rob Dunning remembers his Vauxhall Wyvern and South Coast camping

Those of you who attended this year's annual reunion (2025), will recall I set up a quiz inviting all who visited the website, to name the 2 characters in a photograph, aside and on my first car. They were John Bonner, former St. Nick's pupil and Janice Bulgin, former St. Mary's pupil and sister of Geoff Bulgin from St. Nick's.

John and Janice were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they were saying their "goodbyes", prior to John and myself setting off in my Vauxhall Wyvern, for a camping tour of part of the South coast. This was in 1962.

Our first destination was Brighton, and, in those days, it was possible to drive, almost uninterrupted, through central London; through Croydon, and onto the A23. We stopped off just North of Brighton, on Lewes common, and set up camp for the night, heading off into Brighton for breakfast the following morning.

Having spent a few hours in Brighton, we set off, following the coast road, towards Chichester and Selsey, stopping for dinner in West Wittering, and settling, for the night, back in a campsite in Selsey. Portsmouth and Southampton were our next ports of call, where we spent a few hours, sunbathing and watching the ships rolling in and out of Southampton harbour.

Our next stop off was at Beaulieu Motor Museum, where we wondered at how some of the older cars on view ever managed to get anywhere, being so unwieldy and with relatively small engines. Moving on, having set up camp near Beaulieu for the night, we passed  through the lovely New Forest, and on to Dorchester, in Dorset, where we visited a beautiful quiet coastal village of West Bay... more sun bathing, and we could not believe our luck at how good the weather remained for us.

Our next stop off was in a village In Somerset called Martock, not far from Yeovil, where  some of my relations lived. Obviously, we made a very impromptu visit to my Aunt Rose (my  mother's sister). We took very welcome advantage of the offer of a slap-up meal, which  was taken after an equally welcome bath. We also slept at my aunt's overnight. We departed, after having taken a wonderful breakfast, and set off on our way, on the Saturday  morning.

Unfortunately, a few miles down the road, we encountered something of a potential  curtailment of our tour. We came to a railway level crossing, and the gates were open, so we  continued at our normal travelling speed. However, the term "level crossing" was  something of a misnomer. There was a drop of about seven inches down to railway level,  and the same height back up to the road the other side. This nearly shook our brains out,  and, after having returned to the road height on the other side, we heard a scraping noise. It sounded, initially, like a tree branch having been caught under the car, but there were no  trees around for this to have happened. So, I stopped the car, and immediately I could see  that the nearside rear of the car was much lower than the rest of it. So, looking underneath, it was clear that part of the rear spring, normally attached to the rear chassis, had, with a  piece of the chassis, collapsed into the boot. Clearly, we could not continue like this, since  the rubbing noise we heard was that of the rear tyre rubbing on the collapsed bodywork.

Of course, in those days, garages did not open on weekends, but on looking around, just  down the road was a small garage, the type with just one petrol pump, but it was closed.  However, I decide to knock on the front door of the cottage next door. Fortunately, it belonged to the garage owner. I explained my problem, and, fortunately, he was willing to help, to a point. He opened up his workshop, took out a piece of quarter inch thick steel,  about twelve inches long and three inches wide. " Here you are" he said "Jack up your car until the piece of chassis drops below the rest of the chassis. Put this piece of steel  between the two so that it supports the broken piece." This, we did, and we were mobile again.

Now, we had two choices. The sensible one would have been to cut our losses and head for  home. We were not the sensible kind of people then, so, we continued on our journey,  heading for Lyme Regis, where we tried to find some Jurassic artefacts, but, without  success. From there, we journeyed on to Exeter, where we visited the cathedral. From Exeter,  we travelled a few miles to Exmouth, where my family used to spend holidays, on  the beach and mussel picking on the rocks at one end of the beach.

We stayed overnight there, and, then down the other side of the river Exe, through Budleigh  Salterton, to the beautiful seaside town of Teignmouth. Here we managed to find a  campsite, overlooking the sea, but on a very steep slope. The repair to my car had not bothered us at all until we tried to park, facing down a steep slope, and discovered that the  handbrake was not operating as efficiently as it used to. On investigation, we discovered  that the cable to one of the rear brakes had broken, and only one rear brake was working, and insufficient to stop the car from rolling downhill. So, we concluded that we had to park  the car broadside to the slope, which did the trick. We stayed overnight at this site, moving  on to Torquay later. We could not find a suitable place to set up camp, so, we decided to  stay at a two-star style hotel, cheap and not wonderful. I wondered, a few years later,  whether we had stayed at the same hotel that became the source of the venue for the TV  series Fawlty Towers, because the proprietor was an exact copy of John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty.

Our last venue was the fishing village of Brixham, where we bought, from the quayside, some filleted cod pieces, which we cooked on a makeshift Camping Gaz stove. By this time, we were running low on funds, and did not want to risk the repair on my car failing on us. So,  off we set back towards Middlesex, heading through the beautiful Dartmoor, up to the A30 main road back.

Fortunately, our repair stood up, and, once home, I had the rear chassis rewelded, and it  lasted me another three years, until I was able to sign it off, and to buy myself a beautiful Ford Anglia, but, that is another story, this one now concluding.

Rob Dunning.

(first published September 2025 in Newsletter 9)