Thursday 14-06-26 - To Goodwood Festival of Speed

Thursday came, and I had booked a day off work. Dad had bagged two complimentary tickets to the Rolling Roadshow, the first day of the Festival of Speed at Goodwood.
The Festival of Speed (FoS) is a petrolhead's wet dream, a living record of the racing industry from its early days in the 1910s and 1920s, all the way through to the current day. They have Formula One cars, Nascar entrants, touring cars, winners of Le Mans and supercars, as well as trade stalls showing all the latest street-legal and concept cars.
We got there by about 9am, and wandered in. The first stand / stall is the exhibition of the cars who will be driving up the hill. The whole thing about Goodwood is showing the cars off, how they drive, and during the day there was a steady procession of Fiats, Peugeots, Fords, Audis, Ferraris and others going up the hill.
I did suggest to Dad that he ring up Audi and ask for a trip up the hill; to be fair, he did, but unfortunately the woman he spoke to advised that she had already allocated all the spaces and so he was fresh out of luck. But that didn't ruin the day; we enjoyed ourselves and the weather stayed with us.
We skipped past the first stand and proceeded deeper in to the FoS. Dad had done some research and apparently there was a GT40 somewhere in there; Dad used to own a kit GT40, and so that was a highlight he was looking forward to. The way that the cars are displayed at FoS, you can walk up and down and in between them, peering into their cabins and inspecting their engines and exhausts. As I said, it's a petrolhead's dream. Dad was in his element; I was just there for the day out. We talked about allsorts; the economy, work, family, you name it. It was a nice relaxing day. The Thursday is normally busy but not crowded, and so it proved. Dad got to see his GT40 in the 'Style et Lux' paddock, which is where it really belongs; I'm not any kind of car specialist but the smooth curves of the GT are something to behold.
We left at about 1:30 or 1:45 and headed home, Dad had seen all he wanted to see and TW was busy in the afternoon and relying on neighbours to look after the kids, so it made sense.
It was a good day; it was good weather and it was nice to spend some time with the 'old man' (i.e., Dad). Hopefully we can have a few more like that during the summer.