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NY500 Meet Up and Off Road Run - May 8th
Pictures and video by John Gray, Brian Hartley and Peter Whitaker.

It is always a bit of a gamble organising an event in early Spring - you never know how the weather is to perform, even snow can not be ruled out in the North, luckily the day chosen, Sunday May 8th, was warm clear and sunny for us all day. A plan put together by organiser Peter Whitaker was for a convoy run out from Tadcaster to the recently opened Motoring Cafe, NY500, just north of Malton where the owners were delighted to allow us a designated grassed area to park up. The cafe, which included a small autojumble on the day, is always thronging with bikers and classic vehicle owners most days but particularly at weekends, is well worth a visit, was ideal and the collection of military vehicles on show did not displease the public present.
 
   
Protocol dictated that a convoy was not very apt under the circumstances with the ongoing war in Ukraine and therefore members were asked to make there own way individually to arrive mid morning. Well over twenty assorted MV's had made the effort to attend, a quarter of which were Jeeps, along with a bunch of Land Rovers, a USAF crew bus, Dodge WC54 Ambulance, one of only three left worldwide 1941 Australian Ford Utility 11YF - that gained particular attention, a Pinzgauer and a late VW 183. With the warm weather it was no surprise to see the entire Gray family, John with sons Matt and Tom, each in their own Jeep, make their way along the country lanes from Wetherby entirely with their windscreens down - great spirit chaps.

 
 
Two hours later with much tea, coffee, bacon butties, cakes, taken in and a great deal of chit chat and story exchanges arrangements had been made to visit the private MV collection put together by Andy Abbey 9 miles away at Rillington. We were warmly welcomed by farmer/contractor Andy who had taken great care to pull all his 'heavy metal' out for display. He fortunately has literally acres of space on his farm to store the, predominantly armoured, vehicles and a purpose built building houses his Abbott, Sabre, FV432, and Stalwart with the rest of the collection, 1945 MB, a couple of M35 Rio's and M10 ammunition trailers being housed in a large Dutch barn structure.

 
 
He operates on site tank driving courses ( www.tanks-r-us.co.uk if you fancy a go ), having constructed an almost one mile track in a coppice adjoining his crop land a quarter of a mile from the farm. Very well drained and undamaging it proved a great hit for the Jeeps, and anyone else who wished to, later in the afternoon to have a 'play' on, even the organisers newly restored Slat Grill MB had to check it out if only to see that the transfer box worked properly after only 40 miles running!
 
 
Encouraged by the excellent feedback on the day from the members that were there branch Sec. Brian Slingsby has suggested that it would be a great annual addition to the Yorkshire MVT calendar, if we could guarantee the sunshine we got this year, every year, I see no reason why not.
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