Clubman Estate Photo Shoot - December 2006
I was contacted by the Clubman Estate Register, who had been contacted by a magazine called Intersection. It is a fashion and car magazine that apparently sell about 30,000 copies per issue. They were looking for a clubman estate to use in the next few days for a photo shoot in mid Wales.
I sent an email and a photo of the clubby over to Intersection late the same night. The following morning I got a nice email from someone who sounded very excited and said it was just what they were looking for. Now the fun started! The clubby was off the road for the winter so no insurance and had not been run for a while! I asked them to look into either taking it on a trailer to the location or even pay my insurance. They found that the trailer option was to cost a fortune at such short notice and the insurance was a better bet! I was due to do the shoot on the Friday and it was my 21st on the Saturday, ironically you need to be 21 to have single day insurance, so I had to find another option. The only thing I could find was pay as you go insurance and so had that for one month, Which was a nice bonus! They also obviously offered to pay any expenses!
So I was all set to go, my sister kindly volunteered to come with me for company, Friday morning came around, and I found I needed a new battery, so put one on! I then started to drive out of the garage and overnight my drivers side rear wheel had gone flat! I did a speedy tyre change of about 4mins and got on my way, only to find that the spare was very low on pressure, a slow puncture I think! I got to the nearest tyre centre and got it fixed. I then started the journey and found that I was now travelling during the rush hour I planned to avoid! I got stuck in many roadwork's and also most of Shropshire was underwater due to major flooding around the River Severn, so that meant a lengthy diversion. We arrived at the location, Rhayader about 2 hours late, but everyone was very understanding. We were very cold due to the heater being stuck on cold and the windows steaming up without it, so we had it blowing icy cold air on us all morning, lovely!
We followed the band that were having the feature in the magazine and the various stylists, and photographers etc, up onto the moors in the Elan Valley. We did various shots on some seriously steep roads and eventually finished when it was going dark about 4.15 ish. We decided to get a hotel and drive back in the morning as we were both very tired and cold!
We had an uneventful drive home having ironed out any problems with the clubby on the way down. Oh the only thing that was a problem still was the heater, this proved to give my sister the flu a few days later!
It was a very enjoyable couple of days !!