On Sunday was the yearly Mini gathering at the Brooklands museum, Byfleet. I wanted to have my Mini working before this event - being the first event of the season, but it was not to be this year. This is the first major event I’ve not been to in a Mini in 2 years!

Anyway, so I tagged along at the back of the convoy in my Fiesta. Our convoy included fellow Mini-nuts from the Bournemouth Mini club so there was about 30 Mini’s in total. We left ASDA Havant/Bedhampton at 9.00am.

I arrived 10 minutes before everyone else to help out with the organizing of the Mini’s on our club stand, which all went well. We were able to take up pretty much as much room as we wanted, apparently, so we did!… Club stand looked great, as always.

After all the Mini’s arrived and were parked on the stand, we had a walk around looking at the various Mini’s. Rosie, a friend of mine, has a thing for Mini Clubman’s, so hence the amount of photos I took of them. Looking at them more often than normal, I can see why she likes them a lot.

This one in particular was very special. I’ve seen it a number of times before and it has a very tidy Honda Vtec engine conversion. Clubman’s are an obvious choice for non-Mini-engine-conversions since the Clubman front-end is longer than a round-nose.

Just around the corner, I noticed this awesome Jack Knight 16 valve conversion. The Jack Knight conversion is a 16 valve head on a normal a-series Mini engine, but of course not without its own modifications.

I won’t write too much, but here’s a collection of other photos I took which I liked in particular.

This is some sort of Innocenti variant, I think.

Beautiful Orange Mini Clubman 1275GT

The new Mk2 MINI Cooper S, I believe. Looked nice.

A tidy Mk3 Mini on 10-inch GB Minilites.

Mike and me decided to take a climb up onto the Brooklands race circuit itself, on the banked corner. Pretty steep and it was scary to think what it must have been like to drive around here, especially in the old race cars which they used.

An awesome view of the show from up here…

After struggling to get back down again, we ventured off again looking at some more cars on the show. This Mini wasn’t particularly noticeable at all, until I looked down the side of it and noticed this strange hatch thing.

Never seen anything like that before, but looks pretty funky! I think its some sort of storage box which goes into the cabin. Very cool.

While walking toward somewhere that sells food, I noticed this green-machine had arrived! One of my favorite Mini’s I’ve ever seen, and one which has been featured in all the magazines numerous times.

Just an awesome machine. The engine was something else too. An 8-valve a-series engine with the Ford ignition module-thing, a 45 DCOE Weber, and much more.

After getting food, the hill climb began. There is a section at Brooklands which includes a really steep, short hill climb where anyone who dares drives their Mini up the hill. Its incredibly difficult, very steep and plays hell on any car that tries.

The Clubman above went up pretty quick, with the help of its twin Weber’s and Vauxhall powerplant. Jeff decided to take his Mk1 rally Mini up the hill as well (brave!), but he did really well.

Loads went up the hill, and this year I think everyone made it without any major problems either. A great day out, and luckily the weather stayed nice too. Hope you enjoy the photos, there’s loads more on my Flickr portfolio.