A retail park on the outskirts of Guildford. 4.0 clock on a gloomy Sunday afternoon. A bitter February wind swirls around the abandoned shopping trolleys & plucks litter from the hedgerows & gutters. The shopping masses stream out of Halfords, B & Q & CarpetRight, heading home to a cosy night, comatose in front of “I’m a micro celebrity, get me a life”.
Who’d want to be out here in the cold & the dark.
Well, us actually.
Guildford used to have a thriving cruise scene with cars rolling in from London, the South Coast & as far away as Oxford, to park up in front of the 50s style BurgerKing, check out each others’ rides & pose the night away. There was even a rock n roll disco belting out cruising tracks. Once the shops shut at 5, the carpark would be refilled with rods, Kustoms & classic Yanks. Good times. I took the trike there several times.
Unfortunately, like all good things, it didn’t last. The numpty boy racer hothatch crowd moved in, the dual carriageway beside the carpark became a racetrack for hyped up idiots to compare dump valves & prove how few brain cells they owned. Inevitably the local Police made their presence felt & the meets gradually faded away. The cruisers left in search of  more welcoming carparks & burger bars.
Thankfully though, it looks like a few hardy souls are making a tentative return, quietly gathering once more in the glow of the BurgerKing neons. With luck the Corsa cretins & Peugeot pillocks have moved on in search of other events to spoil & the Kustom crowd can reclaim their tarmac.
So there we were, trawling the parking spaces for interesting machines. Not a bad turnout for a bitterly cold February evening. A pair of tri Chevys in matching baby yellow & another in red & white; a pair of Corvettes; half a dozen big modern Yank pick-up trucks as well as several of more vintage pedigree; a gorgeous Plymouth Fury; a lovely Dodge Coronet; a handful of classic Brits; a gleaming black Chevy Suburban; an enormous Lincoln; a 60s Mustang; a huge modern Chevy station wagon; a white Dodge Charger & even a pair of hardtail chops.
Not a bad showing at all.
This is our local cruise. Taz & I live literally a 5 minute drive away from the Ladymead retail park on Woodbridge Road, Guildford, so once we’ve finished a few projects & got ourselves roadworthy, we’ll be doing our bit to support it. See you there?
The Guildford cruise meets on the first Sunday of the month, from around 4.0.clock onwards.

-Manky