This timelapse video was taken at dawn, unfortunatly most of the sequence was obscured by condensation on the window, but there was enough video to see that passing planes were casting a shadow of their vapour trails on the clouds.
The Goodwood Festival of speed is that largest motor car festival in the world attracting top car manufactures as well as displaying many rare, iconic, famous and modern motor racing cars and bikes. Many famous race drivers and riders from the past and present also attend the event so is a good place to go to see many of the motor racing heroes past and present. It is also the only show that all the top Formula One teams attend.
The festival is always arranged to be the weekend before or after the British Grand Prix and is located at Goodwood house near Chichester in the South of England.
McLaren MP46 F1 1991 Senna 3rd Championship
The Moving Motors show is a motor show where manufactures show off their latest cars and allow people who have applied in advance to take the cars up the hill climb to try them out. All the exhibited race cars and bikes that will be shown off on the weekend of the Festival of Speed (FOS) are displayed in the exhibits, you just don’t see them in action or the vast array of famous motor racing stars from past and present.
If you want to take photos of the vehicles on display then it’s a good day to go as the crowds are much smaller than they will be on the other days.
I have been meaning to go to the main Goodwood festival of Speed event held on a Saturday and Sunday for several years but never managed too actually go for various reasons. So I promised myself I would go this year. Once again something came up and we were unable to make the dates. Through chance the AA was giving away tickets to the Moving Motors event held on the Thursday and as we had just changed our car insurance to the AA so we were eligible to apply. To my surprise we managed to get a couple of tickets.
Knowing the crowds would be smaller and I would have a good opportunity to see the cars on display even if they were not on track I was not disappointed I wasn’t going to the main event.
Chichester can get busy near Goodwood at the best of times so we was expecting to sit in queue’s for a while. We arrived in the area of Goodwood around 9:30am from the East on the A27. To our surprise there was no queue’s, we just followed the signs to Goodwood FOS straight into the rather large field of car park A on the south side of the Golf course. There was a few thousand cars their by that point as the gates open about 7:30 am and the car park was about half full.
There was a tractors and trailers ferrying people from their cars to the golf course but we decided to walk. It took us around 5 to 10 minutes to get to where the tractors were dropping people off. We then had to walk across a temporary walkway across the Golf Course to the festival entrance over various surfaces or grass, plastic walkway and gravel walkways. It took about 20 minutes to walk from our car to the entrance.
I had two tickets for myself and my wife but my daughter was free that day and wanted to come along. I had checked the website and saw that it had not sold out and decided that we would buy her a ticket on the gate. I didn’t realise that the event was advanced ticket only and it wasn’t possible to buy a ticket on the gate. There was a couple of people trying to sell spare tickets but unfortunately I only had a credit card. Thankfully a group of men overheard us explaining our predicament to the Ticket collection office and took pity as they gave us a spare ticket they had.
The first area we came to was exhibiting aircraft and flying related exhibits such as paragliders and several small aircraft such as Biplanes. Behind this was where all the new cars that were being picked up and dropped off by the lucky people who were taking them up the hill climb. There was also several cars by each manufacture on display to look round.
Delahaye type 165 Cabriolet 1939
Bugatti type 44-45 Roadster Luxe 1929
We made our way round an area where vintage cars and classic super cars were on display. Then we had a look round the McLaren stand where the 650s and P1 supercars were on display along with a few stern looking bouncers. There was also some F1 memorabilia such as a helmet and steering wheel of Alain Prost and Mika Hakkinen.
McLaren 650s
We then made our way over to the display paddock where all the classic and modern race cars and bikes were on display.
This was our main area of interest looking at a whole range of old and new racing machines. Most of the displays had arrived but there was a few cars and bikes that arrived throughout the day. Ferrari, Williams and McLaren has their F1 cars on display. Red Bull and Mercedes arrived later in the day.
Renault F1 Fernando Alonso 2005 Championship car
1971 Ferrari 712 Can Am driven by Mario Andretti at Watkins Glen
Williams F1 1990 Thierry Boutsen
Land Rover obstacle course
On the opposite side of the track of all the car manufacture stands and general tents and displays for various companies and organisations showing off their products. Most notable was range rover with an obstacle course that you could be taken round of you joined a very long queue. Jaguar had a built a skid pan that a driver takes you out on their latest car and spends a couple of minutes doing powerslides and donuts. Honda had an interesting stand of Their full size cars packages in matchbox style boxes including a McLaren F1 car. The British Touring Car drivers Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden were being interviewed. They turned out to be the only famous people we saw but we later saw on tv there were many more just not on the areas we went to.
On the whole it was a good day. If you want to see the cars on display and have a good look round and take a few photos without to many people in the way then it’s a good day to go to the festival of speed, as the crowds are a lot smaller. Though by late afternoon it was busier with some more famous cars having a crowd round them.
If you want to see the cars running and see famous people then the weekend would be better.
Make sure you take cash for some of the stands and ice cream vans as the cash machines were charging £2.50 to take money out.
We had to leave late afternoon so didn’t get time to see some of the other displays near the main house. Such as the super car paddock and American race car area and the Rally Area further up the hill.
Ford Focus 2001 World Rally Car Colin McRae
See more picture in the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2015 gallery
Onwards and upwards, this year is going well in complete contrast to last year. There has been a steady growth of my investment since February with the biggest increase in May of £146 followed by July of £131.
Fund Start Price: £4.28
End of July Price: £4.88, increase of 14% on start value. +£426
Investment Minimum Target £5.65
It’s been a few months since my last update. In that time my fund has steadily grown, hurrah. There was growth after Christmas as companies that have done well have announced their results. With the general election this year there was a dip in performance as the polls couldn’t decide if there was going to be an out right winner for any political party. Now the Conservatives have been elected with a majority the share prices have grown well. Currently I’m over £200 above my starting price and starting to claw back some of the interest charges I have paid so far.
The blue line on this graph shows the story of my investment fund since I started it in November 2013. The red line shows the price I got for the shares.
in the low of October 2014 the loss was over £200, now im back up to a gain on the initial fund of £234. Lets hope that the story for the next twelve months is not like the last and this small investment meets my target.
Fund Start price: £4.28
Current price: £4.61
+£234 on initial investment of £3000 (as of mid May 2015)
Investment Target £5.65
December 2014
It is Christmas time, a time for giving and sharing. Unless you are an investment manager who has mix Santa up with Robin Hood and have managed to take even more of the funds from my account. I will be taking notes and expect an extra big gift next year!
December Start price: £4.123, end price £4.147
November 2014 – 1 Year Update
Well what can I say other than, that didn’t quite go as well as expected. After 12 months and a promising start I am £113 down on my original investment plus the extra interest I have incurred on my account for taking the £3000 out in the first place.
I still feel confident it will all work out in the end and I will at least break even. This month has been promising as I gained another £70 on last months total.
November starting Price: £4.018 Ending Price £4.118 (+£70.10 for the month)
October 2014
Another month goes by and a few more pounds dissapear from my account. Though overall there was a loss of another £49 the picture is slightly better than it was looking at first. The month started at £4.056 per unit and fell to £3.802 by the middle of the month at total loss of £178. For the second half of the month there was a steady rise back up to £3.985 per unit so in the end it was just a £49 loss.
Next month my investment will be 1 year in, lets see if the wheelers and dealers can manage to at least get this “investment” back up to the starting price.
My comments on the batteries performance is at the bottom of this article. I will post updates over the coming months to let you know how the battery is lasting.
I have a Nokia E63 phone which needed a new battery as the original battery was four years old and barely held a charge for a day. I spent some time looking for an original genuine Nokia replacement battery but kept finding ones that in reviews on Amazon and other sites were being reported as fakes. There were some stores that did sell the original BP-4L Nokia battery for around £16 to £20 but were out of stock.
I decided that I would need to go for a compatible battery but again finding a good quality battery took some research. Generally the cheap batteries that claim to be genuine for only a few pounds found on Ebay and Amazon will be fake. Alternately replacement non Nokia batteries that are cheap are probably poor quality batteries that will only last a few weeks or months before the battery you replaced it for worked better. For my E63 phone it seemed that batteries for £10 or over should be better quality replacement batteries.
Chinese batteries are commonly considered low quality and Japanese batteries are considered good quality. Though this s a general statement a lot of fake goods do come from Chinese sellers.
I then came across the Eterno mobile phone batteries being sold on Amazon. Originally I ignored them because there was no reviews but then decided to take a closer look as Amazon was selling them as fulfilled by Amazon meaning they were being despatched by Amazon and not the third party seller which gave me more confidence that they were not a poor product. Amazon also sell them on their French and German sites.
Eterno is a trading name for a Japanese company called Yana Electronic that sells a lot of batteries in Russia. Though the batteries are made in China for Yana Electronics, based on my research I felt confident that these batteries were a good option and brought a Eterno battery for £9.99 from Amazon to replace the Nokia BP-4L for the models 6760sl E52 E55 E6-00 E61i E63 E71 E72 E90 N810 N97
I have had this battery a couple of month now and charged it several times. Each charge has lasted 4 to 6 days which is good. I use to get around 4 or 5 days from my original battery when it was working well. The extra days i’m now getting will be because my phone is no longer my primary device for email so I’m putting less demand on it.
The original Nokia battery was rated at 1500mAh, the Eterno battery is rated at 1400mAh so holds slightly less charge. My phone is currently on 24 hours a day for two wake up alarms, moderate internet use over wifi, a torch, a few phone calls and texting. I am happy with the current performance of the Eterno battery which has breathed new life into my phone.
I will update this review regularly over the next few months to report on the continuing performance of my battery. Sofa so good.
After 3 month the Eterno battery is still performing well. I have kept a log of when it has needed charging which shows it is mostly lasting 6 days between charges. My phone is on 24 hours a day.
After 5 and a half month I am happy with the performance of the battery which on average is consistently lasting 6 days between charges.
It has been 1 year since I started using this battery and it is still lasting 6 days on average between charges. It has been very consistent and reliable and I would defiantly buy this brand again if available for any other battery requirements I may need in the future.
The article has been independently written and I have not been contacted or received anything from Yana Electronics.
I was getting worried there, I though I was going to get back into profit during September but normal service has resumed to the tune of a £160 loss. I know pocket change to people investing with a lot more than I will ever have but it is all relative. A loss is a loss.
It will be a year in November since I started this investment fund. After a promising start I thought I may just make it into a true profit in the first year. At the moment I would be surprised if I get back to the starting price.
It looks like it may be a while before this investment fund makes me any money. Though I feel it will eventually make a profit, key economies are struggeling at the moment such as Germany, China and the USA. Even though the UK is still doing well relatively, it is not being reflected in the share prices. Things are very up and down with the overall trend being down.
September 1st £4.183 -£68
September 30th £4.051 -£160.53 -5.6%
Finally a bit of progress in the right direction. Gained £100 through August so only another £52 to get back to my starting point.
Aug 1st £4.063 -5.34%
Aug 30th £4.205 -1.78%