AUTHOR: MARK RYALL
Just like to add my thanks to Tut and Verian for all your hospitality and
organising - an absolutely brilliant weekend. The KH sesh was great (the
quickest track session I have ever attended), and the drive up yesterday was the
most fun I have ever had in my car on the road, especially the last couple of
hours of flat out blast to Tut Towers following Nick, Kelvin and Paul (thanks to
Paul too for leading the group all day yesterday at a very quick but sane pace,
and to Mr Routemeister for once again sniffing out some great roads). Great nosh
and chat last night, and it was good to put faces to a few more SE names.
Had to be back by early afternoon (engagement celebration barby with friends),
so I made my own way back. Originally planned to drive down at a very sedate
pace, but that all went out the window when I got on the Braemar to Blairgowrie
road, which really begs to be driven at warp speed in an Elise.
TT weekend, car back in one piece (phew!), beer with friends, Exige tomorrow.
Life doesn't get much better!
AUTHOR: SIMON ARNOT
Again, thank you very much Tut and Verian for the entire weekend, everything
about it was superb. Hope to meet up with everyone again sometime soon,
hopefully at another TT.
p.s. I'm told that the sound of sirens could be heard heading up towards
Glenshee about 3.50ish today, hope that it wasn't for anyone on the run.
AUTHOR: BRIAN JAMIESON
Fantastic weekend - many thanks to Tut and to Verian- unique occasion - great
roads, countryside, KH (not a single red flag!), weather, cars, people, food,
not least Tut Towers itself!
And Linda says "thanks" too - she really enjoyed meeting "all these mad people
whose idea of fun is driving 8 hours on terrible roads in rattly little
cars".......
AUTHOR: SIMON IRONSIDE
:o) Thankyou so much tut and Verian, for the whole weekend - most memorable time
with Scottish Elises yet. Great to meet everyone, would be fantastic to do it
again sometime.
AUTHOR: BRIAN LAING
Just like to add my thanks to Tut and Verian for a
great weekend, even the weather was spot on and reckon that is the best couple
of days I’ve had with the Elise since I got it. My only regret was having to
leave early and miss out on Tut Towers and the Sunday run.
Thanks also to Kerry for some more great roads between Fort Bill and Kingussie
where I left Kerry’s ‘alternative route’ group and blasted back home on the
backroads via Feshiebridge, Nethybridge, Tomintoul, Dufftown and Huntly at mega
‘tuts’. Only delayed slightly by a police car who signalled me past on the
first reasonable straight, the usual Renault Scenic driver (features in every
road run), and some Harleys (including HOG 13) on the Tomintoul section, home by
5:10pm and in Glasgow by 8:45, so still have some brownie points left although
severely depleted.
AUTHOR: CHRIS
& GAYNOR TIMSON
Thanks again for another legendary weekend.
Hands up who's done all three?
It was good to see old faces again even though I didn't know many names and good
to meet a few new ones as well.
Scotland is THE best place to drive an elise and including a Knockhill sesh
makes for a more memorable weekend. I'd love to do it again sometime. Tut &
Verian, cheers for being perfect hosts of a tremendous motoring weekend.
AUTHOR: STU CARTWRIGHT
Tut, Verian, everyone - thanks for a top
weekend :)
AUTHOR: DAVID LOCKHART
Tut, Many thanks to you and your family for your excellent hospitality this
weekend.
AUTHOR: ROX
Here here... Cheers Tut and many thanks to Verian.... fantastickko
weekend.
AUTHOR: CAMPBELL FORD
Tut and team, Top marks once again. Great weekend, thrilled to
participate in practically all of it... probably my last major extravangaza
before Junior arrives (well, maybe except a campaganza or two!) so all the more
significant to me.
Flawless organisation and behaviour on the track night. Minimal (or
perhaps zero?) intervention by Plod (other than buzzing the TT Car Park on
Saturday night for something to do!). Smashing catering option at the house,
took the pressure off Mrs Tut a bit.
Complaints:
- insufficient eligible single females of legal age for Mr Leask, despite me
asking Clare to sort it out
- no jacuzzi action (actually probably a good thing in my case...)
- too many people going to bed on Sat night before midnight...myself included;-)
Further thanks to Scotty for hooking up with the splinter group and booking
lunch at Potarch Hotel, what a master stroke. Shame the splinter group then got
splintered when Mike raced off for Braemar leaving a confused Paul G in his
wake!!
AUTHOR: DAVE STANLEY
Thanks for an absolute fantastic
weekend. Brilliant time at KH on Friday, and some of the best roads I've been on
over the weekend, I'm sure there was also some great scenery to be seen but
didn't really get time to look apart from the one time I got a really close look
;-)
Also good to put so many faces to names.
AUTHOR: NICK ROSSI
A pick thanks to everyone involved in making this one of the best driving
events ever and a special thanks have to go to Campbell for all your efforts in
organising over the weekend and for inviting me in to your covert special ops
faction :-) I was completely lost the whole time... I did have a map but it was
a little tricky to read at warp 10 ;-) Some of those roads were spectacular
beyond comprehension.
Washed the grit and carnage off the car today only to reveal that I need a new
windscreen... it's totally goosed! Thought I couldn't see very well 'cos
of all the squished bugs, turns out that wasn't the main problem... it's totally
covered in battlescars! Driving lights are a bit ropey too! Ah, well I had such
a blast that I kinda don't mind. Go figure!
Driver etiquette was impeccable the whole time. It was a joy to be involved in
such a group...
[dodgy file quote(ish)]
...you guys can be my wingmen anytime :-)))
maverick.
;-)
AUTHOR: SIMON JAMES
Many thanks to Tut, Verian and everyone who made TT2005 such a great
occasion. I did not make KH or the big run, but really enjoyed the Tut Towers
booze up, and the run to Braemar (despite having Helen on board, she is a
nervous passenger).
Great memories of Brian "buttling" the champers, and Campbell and Cameron
who found a new way to keep red wine at the correct temperature (over the engine
grille, of course).
Everyone was as usual contributed to making a great atmosphere (even the plod
car outside Tut Towers).
AUTHOR: BOB VAN M
I must be the last one home? :D
After a fantastic fun Walshy activity day at Crail on Monday and another alcohol
night I made it to Newcastle Tuesday afternoon for the overnight ferry to
Amsterdam. The ferry was welcomed by 2 firefighter boats spraying water
higher than the ferry to welcome me.....(or was it that DFDS is today 10 years
old? ;) ) all in style <BG>
Anyway, I cannot add more to all that has already said about another great Tut
Towers week-end; thanks Tut and Verian for organising and treating us all so
well.
Thanks also to all who sorted the routes over the best roads in Scotland and
showing me where to go :D
Special thanks for whoever sorted the weather (Tut again? well done!)
Good to see many again, look forward to the next event.
AUTHOR: DAVE MCFARLANE
Just adding another thank you to Tut & Verian for everything they did for
the weekend... happy to give you another lift anytime Verian!
Thanks again... and please.. ban all sheep from the roads for the next one!
AUTHOR: EM
I think everyone has summed it up brilliantly - but I'll add a few words (ok
- turns out to be paragraphs of waffle - sorry!).
A massive thanks you to Tut and Verian and the rest of the family who were
disrupted by the Lotus massive descending on their fortress. An absolutely
brilliant trip. Thanks Tut for all your organisation... it made it such an
enjoyable event.
Nice to see new faces, and those from TT 2001. As someone has already said -
shame so many people drifted to sleep whilst Sat night was still young - think
those of us in the kitchen group made it thought til about 3am (but I was
slightly drunk at the time so the hands on the watch weren't very easy to
read!).
Hope the Exige that fell off route down the goat track made it back ok.
Apologies to Jaye and Graham for the dust I threw at them after that - and a
sincere sorry to Walshy for my 'brain out' experience when I though I was in the
World Rally Championship! Geo deffo needs checking now!
Loved Sundays drive - think we miffed the waiter man in the restaurant... don't
think he could cope with the pressure of so many people desperate for food!
Great roads Sunday arvo!
Activity Day at Crail on Monday was absolutely brilliant! A real hoon around,
but also the opportunity to learn the circuit and the oval (I LOVE the oval)!
Following his briefing on safety, and not abusing the vehicles, Willy managed to
break a wheel off a quad and break one of the levers on his tracked off road
vehicle - both of which provided much amusement. Luckily his tracked thing was
repaired during lunch for more power slides around the circuit!
Another weekend where I have learnt a lot, had an absolutely brilliant time and
managed to fit some alcohol consumption in too!
Thanks to everyone involved, with special thanks to Walshy for making me grin
like a Cheshire cat. Look forward to seeing everyone again somewhere soon.
AUTHOR: GILES
Thanks to Tut and Verian for a great weekend.
After weekends like that, you realise how good it is to have an Elise to drive
in Scotland, it's just a shame I'm now stuck in Dresden with an automatic Merc A
Class.
AUTHOR: STU
Apologies for the rather long and waffly post but What a fantastic few days that
was then. We were supposed to leave on the Thursday and have a night in the Lake
district but that never happened due to our (my) tardiness so we ended up
leaving on the Friday morning like everyone else. We had a great drive up there
with no bad traffic which was nice and unexpected.
Even more unexpected was turning up at the hotel and there being no other Elises
there and the thoughts of have we got the wrong day started. We were rather
relieved when Michael, Bob, Graham and Jaye turned up soon after.
The evening session at Knockhill was fantastic. It's great to drive on a track
that has hills and dips as it's so unlike most other circuits which are often
pretty flat. It's also great following some of the regulars around there and you
can see the difference familiarity of the circuit makes in their speed through
some of the corners.
Everyone was well behaved and I didn't see any yellow or red flags and only the
odd spinner.
Unfortunately Butt's car expired at this point due to a clutch pipe fault but TT
wouldn't be the same if he made it unscathed.
Tut's car also decided to expel all of it's coolant possibly due to a faulty
cap. Once cooled and refilled all seemed ok which is more than can be said for
the journey back to the hotel. Due to a slight lack of concentration and map
reading skills we managed to head to Glasgow and not Edinburgh so ended up with
a slight detour back to the hotel.
We had a great meal and caught up with a lot of friends and made a few new ones.
The following day dawned bright and after a good breakfast the blur of the
journey began. We spent the day in various different groups and also a little on
our own and the drive was fantastic. Highlights for me were probably the roads
to and around Creiff, the roads through the ski resorts and the road around Loch
Leven.
Also memorable was the goat track which I'm sure wasn't an actual road. It was
very slow and somewhat bumpy and my newly fitted number plate took a bit of a
battering (Not as much as W100HOO's who's lower half of their number plate was
last seen in many pieces flying up over our car :o))
Many thanks to Kerry for the navigation back to Tut's via roads
which simply weren't on our map.
The evening at Tut's was fantastic. The sight of all of the cars at his
beautiful house, listening to people's 'incidents' from the day (would love to
of seen the one with the sheep) and the general atmosphere are memories I'll
keep for a long time to come.
After a good nights sleep, another good breakfast and a photoshoot it was back
at it again on the drive to the lunchtime meet at Braemar.
After foolishly following Tut and the locals for a while we dropped the pace a
little and within a mile or two we were hopelessly lost again. It took a few
miles to find out where we were and we then decided to take a different route
over small roads to the lunch meet. These roads were again excellent and traffic
free.
We had a good lunch and then said our goodbyes to many people and after
following people for a while we made our own way over towards Crail for the
following day. We stopped in St Andrews and had a walk on the beach, a look
around the town and a good meal before finding a bed for the night in some small
coastal town.
A day at Crail airfield had been a last minute addition to the itinerary but I'm
so glad we did it. Andy Walsh organised the day at Crail and both him and Willie
(the owner of Crail) put on a great day. We had an oval, a complete circuit, 4
quads and a Bombadier(sp?)(like a bobcat digger without the digger part) to play
with for the day between about 12 of us.
The oval and circuit allowed relatively safe fun and learning to be had in our
cars but the quads provided more laughs than I can remember having for a long
time. I believe Willie's words were if you break them you pay for them. Oh what
amusement we had when four quads went out of site behind a mound of earth and
only three returned. Then a rather sheepish Willie comes into sight followed by
one of the other quads holding a wheel, half a driveshaft and sprocket. It seems
Willie had got air over one of the jumps but the poor quad had buckled on
landing.
Jaye's (the quad nutter) assasination attempt of Andy, his mud bath and his
rodeo style jump/fall off and get back on without stopping were impressive but
Iain's full role was even more so.
Willie then got the bombadier out and after playing around showing off with it
he broke off one of the steering levers and promptly ran into a building.
By this point we were egging him on to get his GT3 out on track to see if he
could do better with that.
The rest of the day was just spent playing between the different disciplines and
we finished the day running down the quarter mile strip racing both cars and
quads. The baby quads could stay with a porrly driven quad till about 30 mph and
they topped out at about 43mph.
After the day had finally drawn to a close and another good evening out in St
Andrews we started our journey home stopping for the night a bit south of
Edinburgh.
We did the start of the journey on small roads taking the B709 south which is a
good quiet road if a little narrow in places. Some old bloke had refused to move
over and had caused a huge lorry carrying hundreds of logs to swerve and one
side of it was stuck in the mud and the whole truck was listing over
dangerously. Another lorry arrived to help to unload and there was nothing else
we could do (even phones didn't work here) so we did a bit of off roading to get
past it and made our way stopping in Langholm on the way for lunch.
Shortly after this the boring motorway began but even that seemed reasonable.
To sum up thanks to Tut, Verian and family for the weekend, Andy and Willie for
Crail on Monday, whoever pulled the strings for the weather, everyone else for
making it such a fantastic and memorable few days and Scotland for providing a
wonderful backdrop to it all.
One other amusing item of note were the things we came across on the roads while
driving that needed avoiding. These varied from the usual grouse, pheasants,
sheep and rams to the slighty more exotic and unusual huge listing lorry full of
wood, very large black bull standing blocking the road (glad I wasn't in a red
car) and large wooden garden table which the owner of an Audi was trying to
retrieve (presumably he'd lost it from his roof rack after avoiding the nearby
pheasant).
Just need to recover from it all now.
AUTHOR: ANDY AND HETTY
A huge thanks again for a wonderful weekend, just the start to a fantastic
week's holiday.
We must have been lucky with the weather because although it was cold and a few
flakes of snow on Monday and wet ferry crossings on Wednesday and Friday we had
the roof off all but for a couple of hours on Arran!
Need new tyres now!
Thanks again and hope to catch up with you next time we're across the border
AUTHOR: MALCOLM DONOHOE
What a weekend.... :-)
Friday night track night - fantastic fun, stunning weather (finally hot enough to
get the R888s working) and great standards of driving all night. However,
started the night knowing that the front dampers were weeping, so fully expected
to be slow. Wasn't so bad, but the track action certainly seemed to finish them
off by the end!
Thanks to Paul for a wee shotty in the Radical. Mind blowingly different feeling
than the Liz. You get the impression it'd take a long time to get to know and
even longer to get quick. Oh, and sorry to ali for doing a Days of Thunder in
front of him and locking up everything into McIntyres!!
Meal was good fun, after we took the scenic route to the hotel... :-)
Saturday, met up at the Travel Inn - actually very organised and smooth running
for an SE thing!! Had a quick natter, then after a brief discussion about
navigators ;-) piled in line behind Niel "Phenomonal" O... Utterly fantastic
morning's drive follows <details omitted to protect the guilty>
Unfortunately I proved myself right in that I'd goosed the dampers the previous
night - so most of the day was spent trail-braking to keep the nose on the
deck. Didn't spoil it though - spectacular scenery (Sio tells me) and great
roads.
Lunch followed, where we had the most stroppy waitress (nothing to do with "Phenomonal's"
attempts at 'charming' more sandwiches out of them...) ;-)
Afternoon continued as before with Neil and Tut taking turns at the head of the
pack. Got to TT at the end of the day with a layer of silt all over my face and
a big beaming grin - we looked like 60's F1 drivers!
To the party.... Well if you were there... what can I say? Long day's drive +
booze + Shug = not the best combination. Doesn't help that I haven't had a
decent drink in months! Ah well... No harm done (I hope) :-)
So that meant I kinda wrote off the chance of a decent run on Sunday. Did the
best thing in the circumstances and waited till I felt human, then gently drove
home at granny speeds on the main roads. Not chuffed, but rather that than do a
run while not at 100%.
So, in closing - thanks once more to Tut, Verian and the family for the
brilliant hospitality. Great to see so many faces, some known some new. It's a
weekend that'll stay with me for a long time!
Shug
("Mind the Sheep?" ask Dave about that one... ;-))
AUTHOR: TUT AND VERIAN
Had a lovely
surprise a couple of days ago, a large parcel with a framed collection of photos
from the three tut towers weekends, 2001, 2002 and 2005.
Verian was really pleased with it and it now has pride of place in my study.
Many thanks Andy and Hetty for the thought, it was good to see you again, and
hopefully you can plan to stay with us next time you need to get back to Gods
country
We can not reply to all the messages of appreciation individually, but Verian
and I would like to thank everybody who joined in for the weekend, and made it
such a pleasurable three days.
Don’t know how we managed to get the weather again, that was the icing on the
cake, but it was the best yet. Monday and Tuesday we had sleet and hail showers
pouring through. A great group of people, many of them by now old friends over
the last six years, and an almost uneventful tt as far as the police and
accidents went. Considering that we had over 60 cars taking part covering the
best part of 30,000 miles of fast Scottish roads, that was good going.
It is a responsibility taking something like that on, but it makes it all
worthwhile with the end result. Thanks to the caterers and the help in on the
Sunday, Verian had an easier time this year and was able to join in more.
Even though I live up here and know most of those roads, I cant think of
anything that I would rather do at the moment than jump in the car and do it all
again.
All the best
SCOTTISH ELISES
AT TUT TOWERS 2005
Picture links
http://photobucket.com/albums/y215/tut-towers/
http://simonarnot.fotopic.net/c540759.html
http://www.themcfarlanes.plus.com/tuttowers/index.html
http://tinto.smugmug.com/gallery/542699/1
http://www.graham-walsh.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=14
http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/tuttowers/lst?.dir=/&.src=gr&.view=t
http://photobucket.com/albums/v629/Uldis/Tut%20Towers/?start=0
http://www.prasad.it/misc/Tut%20Towers%202005/imageset.html