The Midlands Lotus Owners Club (MLOC) is hosting their annual summer event, culminating at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, again in 2014 with the main event on Sunday 27th July & a pre-event on the evening of 26th July.
The event is now in its third year and well on the way to establishing itself as a fixture on the Lotus club scene. The format will be broadly the same and so Sunday’s activities will include:
• An early morning “run” on some of the best and most scenic roads to be found in the Derbyshire Dales and Peaks (MSA sanctioned)
• A pre-ordered mid-morning breakfast at Hassop Station café
• A procession in to the Chatsworth estate where we have our own parking/display area
• The now famous MLOC catered picnic buffet
• Car of the Day vote and prize-giving
• Last but not least the very well supported MLOC raffle.
On top of all of that of course is Chatsworth House and gardens itself. Open to the public inside and out it is truly magnificent, making for a spectacular backdrop to our wonderful cars. For the first time this year we have an informal pub meet at The Devonshire Arms at Beeley, (a great little pub on the Chatsworth Estate) on the Saturday night so why not book a hotel or B&B and make a weekend of it? If you haven’t been to the Derbyshire Dales and Peaks before I guarantee you will be very pleasantly surprised, it really is a beautiful part of the country with lots to see and do.
The inaugural event in 2012 was a great success with close to sixty cars attending and a huge amount of enthusiasm shown by all. The 2013 event was even better with almost one hundred Lotuses present and looking fantastic next to the magnificent house at Chatsworth. For 2014 we are thinking BIG and hope to attract two hundred cars. The TVR clubs regularly attract 6-700 cars to their “Chatsworth Gathering” and there is no reason why our event shouldn’t grow as theirs has – after all, everybody knows Lotus is better than TVR, right?
Are you interested? As well as the regular MLOC membership we are inviting other Lotus clubs along as our guests – in fact anyone with a Lotus is welcome.
The run and breakfast are optional, as is the catered picnic – you can choose simply to join us at Chatsworth if you wish. Payment for parking at Chatsworth (including a small charge to cover organisational costs – it is not a profit making event), picnic payments and breakfast orders will be taken via the club on-line shop.
All you need to do is register (it’s free) or log on to midlandslotus.co.uk and follow the links to the online store. Do please have a look at and contribute to the MLOC@Chatsworth2014 thread while you’re there.
One last thing – to enable us to reach our 200 car target it would help if people purchased the event ASAP to get the ball rolling (enthusiasm generates enthusiasm) and we ask everyone reading this to tell every Lotus owner they know about the event, whether via a forum, club newsletter, in person or whatever. Hope to see you all on July 26th and 27th.
Dean, Simon and the MLOC team
