Good prize!

I won my first (see how positive I am at the prospect of many more to follow) prize as a result of my new hobby of ‘comping’ of a family ticket to the British International Motor Show. The ticket was only valid for weekdays so we decided to go today and Ady took a days holiday to join us. This had the added bonus of meaning we could drive up – for me to drive, petrol and parking would outweigh the cost of train and tube tickets – for Ady to drive with his free petrol meant we saved loads.

We had a series of complications about where to park, where the correct entrance to collect the tickets was, whether the tickets were actually there once we’d finally found the right gate anyway and at several points during a rather stressful hour I was tempted to have a strop and come home again. Finally we were in though. We could actually have not paid for the carpark (it was a tenner for the day) as we were waved in to find out where the tickets were and then went back to pay, and we could have got into the event without tickets too as they let us in one entrance and told us just to walk across the venue to the other entrance, which actually meant we were there and in. Davies added to his ever increasing collection of wrist bands (he is wearing two from the FoH weekend and now a third from today) and the children got bands with my phone number on incase they got lost. This seems to be standard practise from somebody at most events we’ve been to recently – good idea :).

So we found ourselves in the outside section first and as the weather was okay we looked round that area. We did the Disney Pixar Cars stand,

had a very comprehensive nose around the campervans and motorhomes,

We then queued up to do the Landrover Ultimate Experience. There were a choice of 3 courses; one you drove yourself, one that was very high and another with very testing terrain and plenty of 2 wheels only on the ground stuff. We chose that one and really enjoyed it although the driver was disgusted with us for not being scared and urging him to drive faster 😆

There were various remote control driving challenges which didn’t really appeal to any of us and one where you got to race round a track in sporty looking cars but had to have brought your driving licence to do, which neither of us had thought to do so we couldn’t have a go at that.

We sat down for an early lunch as we’d done early breakfasting and then headed off round the first of the two exhibition halls. I should state for the record at this stage that although I enjoy driving, I do like speed and thrills and I can see the beauty of a nice car I am not hugely interested in them. My preference is for BIG cars; one of my favourite cars ever was a Ford Cortina which was a tank of a car but I loved driving that. So little zippy, sporty things where you are practically sitting on the ground and lying flat to reach the pedals are not for me, even if I do concede they sound nice.

We looked at various people carrier type cars and I was hugely impressed with one that had really cool fold out baby seats that turned into booster seats and then all collapsed back into themselves to be normal seats again. I liked sitting in the campervans the best I think for that driving a bus type experience that I favour. At one point I was asked if I’d answer a few questions and one of them was to name some American cars. I started off well with Hummer and Chevy and then rapidly ran out :oops:.

We did various things on various stands and got loads of freebies. The children squished into a cool pod thing and watched a WALL E trailer,

they sat on bikes and quad bikes,

we all had great fun in the Honda problem playground area

I entered loads more competitions for everything from a holiday to America to a handheld Dyson. We had a go on some bumper cars on the Zurich insurance stand which was wild and with no regard to health and safety at all, but tremendous fun and the kids adored it. I have a bruise on my knee from the steering wheel and we half expected the people manning the stand to nobble us on the way out with an ‘accident? not your fault? want to claim against the person who crashed into your bumper car?’ 😆

We moved into the second hall where they had a ‘green pavillion‘ with hybrid cars, ones that ran on water, oil, electricity, the power of positive thinking… you get the idea ;). That was interesting and we watched a good Michellen display about energy saving tyres, Ady signed up to a liftsharing scheme and took some literature about greener ideas to give to his transport manager at work too.

Davies and Scarlett had a go on a surboard style simulator driving along to replicate how much attention you need to give to various factors when driving including road surface, weather, visibility, what’s happening up ahead and so on.

Then we were lured across by the sound of American Pie booming out to the Chevy stall. Scarlett was utterly delighted and wanted to sit in every single one so she could pretend to drive her chevy to the levy (a fruitless journey as she already knew as the levy would be dry, but she wanted to go along for the ride :lol:). Almost impossible to actually get a picture of her inside due to bright lights and tinted windscreens but she is indeed inside the driving seat here:

She claimed it was her favourite stand and says she will now sing the correct lyrics than her previous version of ‘bye bye it’s american pie, but the levy, but the levy, but the levy was dry’ 😆 And we got a free cd with loads of songs mentioning Chevys including of course American Pie but a favourite song of mine ‘ where have all the cowboys gone’ which I’m looking forward to listening to :).

Hyundai (that doesn’t look at all the right spelling but I’ve already done my disclaimer about my ignorance about cars) and Ford were both very cunningly giving away free ice lollies which guaranteed plenty of visitors although actually it was fine temperature-wise in the halls. Several of the people manning the stands said it had been unbearably hot all the previous days when the weather was so warm outside though so I’m glad we chose not to go before. The Ford stand was easily the biggest and most of a circus. There were of course rows of all their cars but also a stage where a ‘professor’ was doing chemistry experiments and wanted to borrow a five pound note to demonstrate something. Scarlett ran up with one and was projected onto the massive tv screens all over the stand and introduced. Unfortunately Ady (and the camera) was looking at the Ford Galaxy and only looked up when he heard the name ‘Scarlett’ so didn’t capture much of that on camera

I got my fiver back and a digital tyre pressure checking machine though. Then we moved on to the climbing wall. Davies and Scarlett have never been on one before but were both really keen to have a go.The queue was quite long, I had to sign scarily worded parental disclaimer forms and they stood for nearly 20 minutes watching other children either get half way up, look down and see how high they were and get scared, or zoom straight up to the top like rats up drainpipes. I fully expected both of them to get all harnessed up, put one foot on the wall and back out of the whole thing but they were both so up for it, insisting they were going to try and climb right to the top and chattering away to the people running it.

Davies went first and got well over halfway up before struggling to find the next foothold and deciding he’d had enough. Scarlett got really quite close to the top but slowed up and when the guy called up to encourage her she looked down and lost her nerve. She had a real pace on though and looked so tiny way up high. I realised that whilst I often lead the way for my children into crazy things it’s not often I sit on the sidelines watching while they take on these challenges themselves. They were both totally up for it, did well and were pleased with themselves – good result even if my heart was pounding faster with every higher step they took!

We had a quick look round the stands we’d missed out in the second hall and then went back into the first hall to see if there were any more Science museum shows happening. There was one scheduled for 6pm so we decided to hang on for that and the guy on the stand showed Davies various tricks including whipping away a tablecloth and knocking a mat and tubes out of the way to get eggs to land in glasses. He loved it :).

We retired for coffee, chai latte and chocolate cake and then went back to watch the show with was a Punk Science demo by Jon Milton (from Scientrific off Discovery Kids and various other places) – very cool and very funny. It was all about energy, gas, liquids and solids and very interactive. Just how education should be 😉

After that we had one final peep outside to see if the queue had gone down for the Landrover stuff before calling it a (very long) day and heading back to the carpark.

On the way there Ady and I had both had our first ever real life experience of going through the Blackwall tunnel. I was most disappointed that the walls were actually white although in places they were black with pollution. On the way home it totally lived up to every time I’ve ever heared it mentioned in a road traffic report and was closed. So we sat waiting for it to reopen for about half an hour, had some interesting demonstrations of the endless patience and friendliness towards one’s fellow road users that London is so famed for particularly with it’s taxi and bus drivers and finally got home around 9pm.

It would not have been something I’d have paid money to visit and I don’t know that we’d go again but it was an ace prize and a really good day out.