http://www.mychumsclub.comVintageVintage

Here is a piece from Steve who lives in Denver and writes to us about snow. There is advice about off piste and ski jumps so it is not for the faint hearted. You can ask Steve for more information. The hot thermal baths is more my thing but I know there are a good number of chums who ski

Steve

I have always been interested in every aspect of motor cars old and new, and I have been lucky enough to have owned some pretty awesome cars.

About sixteen years ago I thought of building a Caterham. A chap in our office built one in a week. As a Christmas present my family gave me a book called Build Your Own Sports Car for as Little As £250. I read the book several times but eventually concluded that I did not fancy welding the tubular chassis together, although I had been taught to weld in 1954 while doing an apprenticeship prior to university. I then decided I wanted a car with a roof. Again the chap in the office recommended the GT40. I was aware of the GT40 because years ago I knew Jacky Oliver quite well, and he had won Le Mans in one. I was told once I started the project that it was quite a complicated car to build. This did prove to be correct. I am glad I persevered, though, as the result is stunning.

It is said the twentieth century became a battleground for oil whereas the twenty first will be concerned with water.

The stirrings of this concern are apparent in Egypt’s rage about the damming of the Nile. Australia has had six consecutive years of drought. The water table below London is shot to bits. We all need to worry.

The club has chosen to write about water and cities around it.

We have visited Istanbul a city defined by its maritime traffic. In London we visit the Maritime Museum in March and we dine on the banks of the Thames. We visit the Rhone in April and taste the wines that are nourished by it.

Here in the sports section we have commissioned work on rafting and fishing.

In Maidenhead, our base, the river has nurtured settlements for over four thousand years.

The theme of water captures the spirit of our club: a continual study of civilisation’s master works and a studious pursuit of fun.

One of the great pleasures of wilderness rafting in North America is that, unlike other outdoor pursuits, it does not require a high athletic standard. Determination to hang onto a raft while going through rapids helps, together with the ability to erect a tent and crawl into it. Endurance and a sense of humour are advantages if obliged to spend a day or more sitting on a wet raft hundreds of miles from anywhere looking at soggy bald eagles.

Of all the sports and pursuits we can sample in our lives, fishing is one of the easiest to learn, and the most enthralling to practise.  Many of us will retain fond early memories of dipping for minnows in the local pond, or dangling a worm in a stream – but isn’t it terribly time-consuming or expensive to take it up again properly, now there’s more time on our hands?

Ever since “Papa” Hemingway began his legendary alpha-male marathons in pursuit of the great pelagic tarpon and marlin during the early 1930s – and shot himself in both legs with a Colt pistol while fighting off a shark – blue water billfishing has flaunted its reputation as the testosterone-fuelled apogee of angling.

Fishing fashions come and go.  But when it comes to spending a long weekend casting a line in surroundings as spectacular as they are steeped in ancient angling tradition, it’s still hard to find any destination that even comes close to Scotland .