A8/S8 Annual Meet, 6-8th June 2014
 

The A8/S8 Annual Meet 2014

Well boys & girls, as you may already know, next year’s event will be in Scotland on June 6/7/8.

Following on from the theme of recent meets, this will be a ‘family friendly’ event, so please don’t think it’s an ‘old gits talking cars’ weekend! (OK, there will be some of that :rolleyes:, but we’ll include other stuff too!)

But, with over 30,000 square miles of terrain, 6,000 miles of coastline and 790 islands to choose from, we thought we’d ask for your help in choosing an area that you’d be happy to travel to.

We’ve broken it down into 4 key areas:

1. The Central Belt: the area that runs west to east between Glasgow and Edinburgh, running to around Stirling (or even Perth & Dundee) in the north and Ayr in the south.
Pros: it’s where the organisers live; scenery is magnificent; there’s a lot going on.
Cons: the roads can be busy; even Glasgow is 100 miles north of the border.

2. The Borders: the bit north of Northumberland, centred by Jedburgh, Galashiels and Kelso.
Pros: easily accessible from England; scenery is magnificent; lots of small towns, ‘interesting’ roads and places of interest.
Cons: no mountains!

3. Dumfries and Galloway: cross the border north of Carlisle and turn left.
Pros: very easily accessible from England; lots of beautiful coastline.
Cons: the A75 is very busy with ferry traffic.

4. The Highlands: north of a line from Oban, through Perth, to Dundee.
Pros: well, all the good stuff you hear about the Highlands – mountains, lochs, scenery, roads.
Cons: it’s a long, long way for most of you (the Scottish mainland runs for around 260 miles north of the border, as the crow flies!) and there are only 2 roads that go there (both will be busy and slow!); midges!

So, let’s hear from you. There’s a poll attached to this thread with the 4 options above plus an ‘I’m coming where ever it is’ and an ‘I’ll travel anywhere except the Highlands’ option.

Please don’t vote if you don’t think you’ll be coming.

Please vote for one option only to indicate where you’d prefer the meet to be held and to where you’d be prepared to travel. We’ll keep the poll live for a week or two, until we get enough of an indication as to where you want to be and to give you time to check with SWMBO (or HWMBO).

It all sounds good, but for me the timing is unlikely to work. No issue with travelling even to the highlands, but would have wanted to make a weeks holiday with the family out of it, but cant do it with those term dates which I'm sure are strategically placed to avoid a number of other conflicts, doh..... +++

Thanks for the in depth research (doubt it...).
Not fussed where it is as I will be there (so far anyway) :D

Highlands for me :)

There are some awesome roads all over Scotlandshire though, so I should be fine no matter where.

Highlands for me too - best driving roads, and if you're coming to Scotland, you might as well do it properly.

Midges should be fine in June: anyway, there's ways of dealing with them, and it's not like we'll be doing 20 mile hikes! (hopefully...)

Yeh the highlands for me also.

Is there always this little interest at this point? If we exclude Brian and Connor, that's just 7 people expressed any preference as to location of the meet. :-(

If there's anyone else thinking of coming up to Scotland for the annual meet next year, please let your preferences and intentions be known - we won't hold you to it, but it would give us a little encouragement to know that we won't be organising the worst attended meet to date! :o

And if Scotland is just too far, let us know that too - there's no point having a location that puts most of the potential attendees off.

I voted for "I'm coming no matter where it is!"

I haven't voted yet as it largely depends on whether I have the financial means to cover the fuel bill from the South East corner of the country. I've driven to North of Edinburgh before for a week long holiday so the distance itself doesn't put me off - if I had to express a preference I'd say Borders at the moment.

If I am working before the end of the year it also depends on having enough holiday to use and no clashes with stuff I'm organising....

I haven't voted as i'm due an MOT before then and as always don't know if the old girl will be driving or spares, i didn't think it would be fair for others that are deffo's if i swung a location not wanted and then didn't turn up (see i'm not a complete bas***d)

I thought one of the reasons for holding the annual meet North was because of the large number of members North that were put off by travelling so far South. I thought you'd have a big interest as there is a large amount of active members in scotland.

I obviously can't commmit 100% but i'll go with Highlands as i'd like to visit one of your falling down water distillery's.

Hat's off to all you guys that have, were and are willing to give up some of your spare time to organise and to make these meets happen, jim you're just about to find out how difficult it is, Muh ha ha ha. (Not seen that in a while)