Beaulieu, Bristol and Balfour.

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What can we say about the recent Beaulieu Autojumble. Over the otherwise brilliant weekend was of course the shadow of the death of Lord Montagu. But for sure before leaving for a better world he gave his blessings to the event with the brightest September weather you can hope for in the New Forest ( Montagu's own words in a brochure several years back: "It never ever rains in Beaulieu''...well... er...).

Despite the fact that the masses mostly come for cars, bikes and metal parts the bottomline is that this jumble is all about people and meeting people. We'll give you one example from own experience last weekend. 
On super sunny Sunday we wandered into the small 'boots sale'. Instead of searching for overlooked elephant mascottes and the like we looked for a good car. And yes we found a most charmingly patinated Bristol 401 with its owner in similar condition. When you know about Bristol you may instantly know who we are talking about, yet we first had to exchange names with him. Christopher Balfour appeared to know his stuff, he is the writer of the hard to get Bristol bible 'Bristol Cars. A very British Story'.  
As non UK resident I know only one other Balfour: Hugh Balfour, who restored my Amilcar CGSs  in the early 1960s. So I asked Christopher if he had ever heard about Hugh Balfour. He nearly jumped up from his folding chair, "Well yes certainly, he is my cousin, that is to say he was,  he died a few years ago. " And what's more he not only knew the man, he even remembered my car! Well of course this was only 55 years ago which is not terribly long for a man who bought his most recent car (see above) in 1968 or something. Well, that's Beaulieu.

Thank you Michael Ware for importing the idea from the US. Thank you Lord Montagu for maintaining the event in such a brilliant way. And thank you to the daily organisation who pour in all their energy and make it happen. Year, after year, after year.

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