New campsite at Goodwood Festival of Speed

At glorious Goodwood last weekend there was a new campsite established for race goers. Of course it is spotlessly clean and well organised as is everything at Goodwood.

However in truth our attention was quickly drawn to the cars and bikes taking part in Goodwood’s Festival of Speed.

There is a motor caravan connection here because one of the competitors was security product manufacturer Milenco’s managing director Nigel Milbank, who owns the 1999 V&M Yamaha R1 on which the late David Jefferies won the Isle of Man Senior and Formula One TTs in 1999, plus the North West 200, Ulster GP Superbike race and the Macau GP.

Nigel bought the bike so that an important piece of motor sport history could be preserved and given the occasional bit of light exercise.

It wasn’t just us who loved the Yam. They all turned away when we started taking photographs, but in our shot you can see current British Superbike hot shot Carl Crutchlow (left in red and black leather), former king of British superbike racing John Renolds in blue leathers in the background and in red white and blue leathers former multi World Champion Mick Doohan.

Goodwood is more than bikes. This is the actual car Nigel Mansell drove when he walked away from F1 racing as World Champion and went to America to win their Indycar Championship.

However our ladies seemed to be more attracted to the Gulf exhibition area. Behind the GT40 in the foreground is the actual Porsche, which Steve McQueen drove in the Le Mans 24 Hour race.

McQueen may have passed away many years ago but his fans live on because this was as close as we could get to his car.

Mike managed to find his way to the Concours area and had to be dragged away from this 1948 Buick.

It was in an identical car, even same colour, that he first drove – at the age of seven.

Although illegal he was living in such a remote part of Canada back then that policemen, and even neighbours, were a few hours drive away. The trouble is he now says he wants one.

And finally the real star of the show – multi World Trials Champion Dougie Lampkin.

Our still cameras couldn’t capture the extraordinary things he can do with a motorbike but if you go on to Youtube and imput ‘Lampkin + Goodwood’ you can see what we saw. In one sequence you’ll see Goodwood owner Lord March lying on the ground and in another you’ll see Lampkin riding across the roof of Goodwood House. On a motorcycle!

Great Goodwood and a fabulous weekend. We’ll be back next year and we suspect so will even more motor caravanners. Especially now there is a nice campsite for us to use.