Brake Pipes & Doddington Carnival

Along with most of the UK we have battered by unseasonably heavy rain of recent, but on Friday with a break in the weather late afternoon and early evening I managed to change the twisted brake pipe,

fit a new brake hose and bleed nipple and get the system bled.

With the truck now serviceable again, on Saturday morning I took it along to the Doddington Carnival.  Our MVT club had been invited along by the organisers, and myself and another member turned up to join in the festivities.

(part of the procession just prior to setting off)

Doddington village has been holding this carnival for 90 years and it is an engrained part of village life that sees the main road closed off and the carnival procession proceed from the middle of the village down to bottom, then up to the top, then back to the start position at a slow walk with 99% of the village turned out to watch.  I was thankful the truck has a crawler gear for first gear (under normal operations you start it in second) as it was a good match for the speed we were doing.

Unfortunately little Vulture was poorly and so didn't come along, so I offered a seat to the eight year daughter of one of the organisers.  Waving to her surprised school friends from the cab made her day, and with a huge smile on her face she turned to me and said "I know what the USA stands for, the United States of Awesomeness" :)   Amazingly the weather held up and was clear and warm and sunny all morning, however as I drove home at lunchtime I could see the weather fronts rolling in, so I pulled the truck over and put the canvas doors on.  No sooner had I done this and the heavens opened in a torrential downpour !  This was the first time I had driven it in really heavy rain, and its fair to say that cab is not that water-tight ! LOL  There was water dripping in from round the windscreen, round the top of the doors, round the side of the doors and also from the vent just in front of the windscreen.  A steady stream of drips from this vent landed with perfect precision on my foot on the accelerator, right on the laces, so that within a couple of minutes I could feel a pool of water gathering round my heel !  All in all an entertaining morning :)