Well, the Rylstone Classic is done and dusted for another year, and all went very well, with no major mishaps that I heard of.
KMC and I headed down to Gosford in Cool Breeze on Friday, having a nice leisurely run down the Great North Rd through Wollombi, which was a definite improvement on the Freeway run last year. Weather was cool, but fine and sunny, so not too bad as we were dressed appropriately. Relatively trouble free once we stopped in Singleton and connected the speedo cable that I'd forgotten about when putting the dash back together the night before and tightened up the fuse for the indicators which was somehow playing havoc with half of the dash.
Got there in plenty of time to check in at our accom and head across the road to the local RSL for a few drinks while we waited for Forum member Kell to finish work and bring the family down to join us for a great dinner, along with a few more drinks.
As usual, we were among the earlier ones at the Gosford Car Museum starting point on Saturday morning, getting there in plenty of time to check out the other entrants as they arrived and stand around chatting in the sun for a couple of hours.
Our running mates this year were the SMOG (Sydney Moke Owners Group) folk, many of whom are Forum members. There were 9 Mokes in our core group, which may have been a few too many to get there in quick time, but we all got on well together and no mechanical problems to speak of this year.
Bellbird Hotel (Cessnock) was chosen for a lunch stop after Wollombi Hotel was ruled out by the 80 or so Minis lining the road when we went through there.
The afternoon was an interesting zig zag run through the back roads on the Eastern side of the highway between Branxton and Singleton. Not an area that Greg or I have ever really travelled much before, so some new scenery for us there.
Regrouping at a servo in Singleton, we were making reasonable time, but had to keep moving if we were going to make Rylstone by dark.
A couple of minor unscheduled stops and a quick visit to a mine site
lost us a bit of time here and there, but still going OK until we found another Moke in distress on the side of the road. Turned out to be a broken rear Hi-lo, which had them stuck until Shorty produced a spare trumpet and ball/socket
. MattP lent a hand on the tools and they were soon back on the road, albeit a little lopsided and weighed down by the decent load they were carrying in the back.
As noble and necessary as this was, it resulted in the Moke group (plus one Mini that was travelling with the broken down Moke) being at the tail end of the field again. The clouds started to look threatening for the first time right at the wrong end of the day.
A little unnerving travelling up the first range coming into Rylstone at dusk and by the time we were on the second range just out of town it was fully dark and drizzling rain. Anyone who has been out on any western roads in the past few months will know that they are littered with roadkill at the moment due to the harsh winter drought bringing the animals up to the road. There are not many wallabies around Rylstone, but a lot of full sized kangaroos and solid looking wombats, so we all breathed a sigh of relief when we made it into town unscathed.
To be continued....
With thanks to AlanS and MattP for a lot of the photos 
Topic: Rylstone Classic 2018 (Read 1204 times)
