Today Felix and I collected the green Crayford /8 estate from Rory in Worthing, Sussex and drove it to my home in Germany.
The whole trip felt like a weird Top Gear challenge with us meeting in Düsseldorf at 4.30 am, packed with tons of tools, spares and a great variety of train, bus and plane tickets. So in the spirit of Clarkson and co. we spent the whole trip basically throwing Top Gear quotes at each other, laughing a lot and getting funny looks.
First leg: Düsseldorf to Cologne airport. A tram full of sleepy drunken people brought us to Düsseldorf main station where we switched to the ICE train to Cologne which of course was 20 minutes late. So when we arrived at the airport we had 15 minutes to get to the check-in and since there was no TV camera around we even ran at one point. Being a little out of breath we discovered that the plane was delayed, too, and we spent the delay waiting and grunting at all means of public transport.
Second leg: Cologne airport to London Victoria Station. Everything went smoothly on the flight so we hurried through the customs at London Gatwick airport only to find out that the bus which should take us to the London Victoria Station left just moments ago. After even more grunting we quickly emboarded a train that took us to London Liverpool Street; we then took the tube to Victoria Station and the train was pretty crowded with shoppers from outside London I suppose.
Remember this was on a Saturday morning. We arrived at Victoria Station with 20 minutes to spare in which Christian managed to get our tickets and I managed to get hold of some sandwitches. All in all everything went rather well, but the only thing we managed to see from London itsself was the Gurke on the way in and Battersea Power Station on the way out. Sightseeing? Well, another time. We were on a mission! But a funny feeling to rush through the London underground with the knowledge that this wonderful city is located just above us.
Third leg: London Victoria Station to Worthing aka THE TRAIN OF DOOM. The British have a great sense of confusing everyone who even thinks about taking a train somewhere. First of all you need a ticket in which case you should know where you need to be going. This is the easy part. You are then confronted with finding out which platform to take - something the British deliberately make so difficult that you are going to miss your train eventually. Even if you know the platform number, finding out where the right platform actually is is close to impossible. In our case the train departed from platform 16 and we were faced with two signs: "platforms 1-9: left" and "platforms 10-15: right" Great!
We somehow managed to get to platform 16 in time and then learned that the train is going to split after leaving the central London area. "The first four carriages are heading towards Worthing, the last eight carriages will be heading to (some place very very far off course)." But when they say "the first four carriages", where do they start counting? The signs contradicted the diagram which contradicted the numbers on the carriages which contradicted the man from British Rail we asked for help. Who contradicted himself by changing his opinion only seconds before the train took off. It turned out he (of course) placed us in the wrong part of the train which we noticed in the very last minute before we would have headed towards... well I don't know. Hell maybe?
But in the end we made it to Worthing and in front of the station there was Rory, the Crayfords former owner, already waiting for us.
Fourth leg: From Rory's to Westerham to Dover. Rory is a great guy who knows a great deal about Crayfords. He has been with the club for quite some time and owns a couple of Crayford convertibles which looked rather nice I must say. We enjoyed Rorys company very much and made plans to meet him at Goodwood in September, but we had to press on in order to do a little shopping and catch the ferry, so we turned our attention to the Crayford /8. It, of course, started up first time and felt really healthy as we set off and had to say goodbye to Rory way too early for our liking.
We then headed towards Westerham in Kent to meet Barry who is the long-term president of the Crayford Convertible Car Club. On the parking lot of the "Grasshopper Inn" Crayford took most of their pictures for their brochures. And it was the place where all Crayford employees had their pints after a hard day of work.
The former Crayford "factory" was just around the corner, the pictures taken at Squerryes Mede road show the place where almost all Crayfords were built, the house with the white 1st floor was the workshop. There was a garage-door at ground level and the window facing the street shows the location of the former construction office.
After half an hour of car talk with Barry we headed to a Waitrose and a Tesco where Christian stocked up on British ales and I bought basically one glass of every marmelade I could find, then we added potatoe chips and whatever you bring over from Britain. Good thing we brought an estate!
Fifth leg: Leaving Britain. The car perfomed absolutely fault-free and we arrived in Dover with time to spare. 
We looked back and realised that at no point we even felt the need of looking under the bonnet. It had been a while since the car had seen a skilled mechanic, but it went smoothly. The list of faults compiled by now was pretty long, but nothing on it would stop us from arriving back in Germany. Things like unevenly balanced wheels, a disfunctional exhaust and a bouncy propshaft cannot stop a stroke-eight. Finally it was time to board the ferry and aknowledge that, sadly somehow, the car won't be returning to Great Britain for quite some time.
Final leg: Dunkirchen ferry terminal to Düsseldorf. 
We refueled the car in France and pressed on through heavy rain, moaning. After midnight we arrived in Düsseldorf, exhausted but happy.
All in all we took a 36 year old car on the longest journey of its life with the only preperation being to bring tools and spares we did not even need. These cars are definetely built to last.
