Wellingtonia 120

The one that got away back in 2020 has finally been captured, even if I was constrained by circumstances to take my picture from a bad angle.

The proceedings started with my collecting £35 worth of plastic wheel hub from Partsplus of Blenheim Road - this being the parts part of the Ford dealer operation. Followed by a visit to Kwik Fit to attend to the tyres, the MOT man having told us that they were on the verge of illegality. Around £500 for four economy tyres - but an efficient service, taking less than three hours from initial phone call at 09:00 or so to exit at 12:00. They also tied the hub caps on with the the sort of  black plastic ties used by electricians - the various dents on the wheels proper meaning that the caps are apt to fall off otherwise. Regular tyres, as opposed to economy tyres would have cost a lot more - but it is an old and battered car and we do not do a lot of miles. Economy might see it out.

I took one of the old tyres home, with the thought that maybe we should install a proper spare wheel, but I don't think that that is going to happen. A real wheel won't fit in the compartment in the boot originally intended for one of those emergency, cut-down wheels and now containing a contraption for injecting goo into your tyre and pumping it back up in an emergency. Even a cut-down wheel, with all the trimmings, would set us back £250. Given that punctures are quite rare these days, I expect that we shall let sleeping dogs lie. Or perhaps we won't fix what ain't broke.

All this left me a bit of time to take a walk around Ewell and pay a visit to Ewell Castle School, which turned out to be having some kind of open day, which meant that I could get in, to be taken in charge by one of the ladies there; a lady who warmed to my enthusiasm for Wellingtonias. It turned out that she had ambitions to get her Wellingtonia into the Guinness Book of Records, perhaps as the tallest tree in a school yard in Surrey.

PS 1: in the margins of all this, I have found that the search key 'wgc', used on this volume to score Wellingtonia, was used, back in the day, to connect up various posts connected with a visit to the Wigmore Hall, as can be seen at reference 5. I think that the template I was then using could not have handled many snaps in one post very well. Probably something to do with wrapping the text around them, or not. From time to time, I think of moving to the more satisfactory search key 'wellingtoniask', in line with pianos, trolleys and so forth - but the change would be a bit of a bother and I have no gotten around to it.

PS 2: the only occasion in living memory that we had a puncture is noticed at reference 6. Contraption not much help on that occasion.

PS 3: I learn that Kwik Fit can work out roughly how old your tyres are from numbers embossed on their walls. Between four and seven years in our case.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/03/wellingtonia-119.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-one-that-got-away.html.

Reference 3: https://partsplusuk.com/.

Reference 4: https://www.kwik-fit.com/. I think that Kwik Fit moved into East Street not that long after we moved to Epsom, say thirty years ago. But I have not bothered to check.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=wgc.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-tale-of-tyre.html.

Group search key: wgc.