| News from the Colonies | Isle of Man
Ramsey on the north-east coast. It then returns to the starting
point to form a 38 mile triangle of public road, taking in over
200 bends and climbing from sea level to an altitude of nearly
400m. By comparison, the 13 mile Nordschleife has only 160
turns and gains just 290m in elevation. If they ever make a pack
of Top Trumps Driver’s Roads, then I know which card I’d want.
MINI UK’s Press Office had kindly loaned us their fully-loaded
JCW Roadster, complete with W2 RKS reg’ plate, especially
for this road trip, and in a town more used to hairy bikers, it
turned a few heads as we parked up on the Prom’ late on the
Tuesday. We’d also dragged along some of MotorPunk’s most
persistent groupies to this damp self-governing British Crown
Dependency: Camp Luke and his muse, Andy, had brought their
slinky Alfa Romeo Spider while, in stark contrast, Rudge and
Mikeyboy had nursed across their fragile Maserati 422 Biturbo
with an interior looking (and smelling) like a pair of Peter
Stringfellow’s underpants. The fourth car in our troupe was
piloted by Carlos; the ex-Manx lad had jetted in to Douglas from
Manchester and gamely rented an appliance-white Fiesta just to
join the fun. After a few local ales, a fruitless hour in the Casino
and a late-night a la carte snack of the famous Manx delicacy
- chips, cheese and gravy - we called it a day, planning an early
photo shoot at the crack of dawn.
Unfortunately, nobody bothered to check the weather as we,
32 | MotorPunk October 2013
“Unbelievably,
the TT record
holder, John
McGuinness,
averaged this
same ribbon
of knackered
tarmac at over
130mph”