Inevitably, spring cleaning and winnowing of the paper archives throws up blasts from the past – often in the form of faded, pre-digital-age photographs.   They waft the embers of dormant memories.

This memory concerns a charity drive I made with my brother 19 years ago in support of the British Heart Foundation.  The Round Britain Reliability Run involved a group of car enthusiasts loyal to the Triumph brand, driving non-stop (save for pit-stop style re-fueling and the occasional sandwich break) around the UK. That’s a distance of about 2000 miles in something like 40 hours, taking a route from London to John O’Groats to Lands End, and back to London.

A number of thoughts struck me, looking at the photo of our ride – a 1981 Triumph Dolomite Sprint; but two in particular.

Firstly,  nobody in 1990 had heard of global warming, so all were oblivious to the carbon footprint of the event or any incongruity with the charitable tone of the challenge (not that heart health and global warming are directly related).

Secondly, this was a reliability run; part of the perverse thrill lay in not knowing with any certainty your vehicle would  hack the 2000 miles round trip. Alright, some of these cars were from the 1950’s, but mechanical reliability – even into the ’70s and ’80s – did not compare to today’s standards.  The Sprint in particular was prone to engine overheating – a defect which, when it occurred, could be ameliorated by driving with the heaters full on and the windows open.

And guess what?  They are still running these events – every two years.  What’s more, the Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run has from last year been carbon neutral.  The carbon impact in terms of off-setting equivalent has been calculated at £10 per car – which is duly charged to the drivers.  The beneficiary charity  seems to change with each event, but an impressive total of  £270,000 has been generated for various causes since 1990.

I never repeated this sort of stunt.  For starters, all the Triumphs in our family wore out or were sold off (we had six over the years).  And I moved on to more mature transport related pastimes, like throwing bags of flour out of aeroplanes (the science and technology of flour bombing is a post for another day).

Anyhow, a few more of these blast from the past photos were  loosed along with this one from the box file of history so, if you’re really unlucky, there could be further posts in Zoonomian’s nostalgia category :-).