Nancy and I were camping at the Del Mar Fairgrounds for the Good Guy's Rod and Custom Car Show since last Wednesday and on Sunday I decided to do the Rolling British Car Day run with my buddies and it was a great choice! A few of our Healey members and English car friends attended. The San Diego British Car Club Council invited all British cars to participate in the run and picnic. The instructions were to show up at either of two different locations and eventually end at a designated venue after you paid $20.00 a car and were given driving instructions. The northern location was at the old Anderson Split Pea parking lot in Carlsbad, off Interstate 5 and Palomar Airport Road.
We would depart at 0930, with instructions that this was not a race but a time to enjoy the wonderful scenery and great weather. The southern group was to depart at 0930 also from the NW corner of Parkway Plaza parking lot El Cajon.
Our Northern group departed on time, and we sorted out to six to 10 cars per group due to stop lights and stop signs, everyone blended well! We headed West towards the coast for a short drive and then headed mostly East through some beautiful hilly country with ranch-style mansions and farms. The terrain was mostly green landscape with hues of different wildflowers in bloom. We had many turns and windy roads to navigate, and it was a most wonderful drive to be in a sports car.
We continued through this type of terrain all on the back country roads and drove through the town of Ramona and continued through even more lovely country scenery to our destination just north of Julian, the picnic area at the Menghini Winery. They had a great area to park in, a corralled grassy area that soon was Overfilled with cars once both groups arrived. Some late arrivals had to park outside the compound just past the corral area.
The winery was not too impressive, but they had some old vineyards and a lot of apple orchards all around the large property which made it a very pleasant and enjoyable setting. Everyone settled in and broke out their picnic lunches and their favorite beverages and the talk turned to all the tales of the adventure to arrive at this destination without any break downs! The cars most represented were old and newer Jaguars of all types, a few Lotus sevens and newer Elites and Europa's, many types of MG'S, a Rolls Royce sedan, Morgans, a couple of Bricklin’s, and many types of Triumphs.