Aalholm Car Museum, in Denmark

"Uncle Joe", a name used to protect the innocent (and not-so-innocent,) has kindly volunteered his own motoring memories. A series of stories have been featured here at oldclassiccar, all of which are true, based on the vehicles that Joe has owned, driven, or worked on, over the years.

If you have similar stories that you'd be willing to share with the world, I'd be happy to feature them here too, using an alias if you'd prefer!!

I've always enjoyed reading people's firsthand recollections of cars, and their foibles, in years gone by. Stories similar to this can be found on the main Motoring Memories Project page, which can be found here.

No-one at oldclassiccar necessarily agrees with, or condones, the events in these stories, and opinions given are not those of the site editor, but of the contributor!

An eye-opening day trip to Aalholm by motorcycle

As part of our holidays this year, we had decided to take a trip down to a vintage car museum at Aalholms Slott, which is in the southern part of Denmark, about 12 miles away from the ferry port of Rödby. On the chosen day, the weather was absolutely perfect. There wasn´t a cloud in the sky, the temperature was around 28C, and it was totally windstill. Initially, we had thought about driving down in the air conditioned luxury of our Chrysler New Yorker, but when we saw the weather was so fine, we decided to take our motorcycle, which we call Scooby PV, after the registration number. I suppose this is a strange name, as Scooby Doo is a male dog, and a PV, being a car is female.

Scooby is a real motorcycle. A large capacity long stroke Vee-twin with air-cooling and a single carburettor. Its not fast, maybe 100mph on a good day, (a very good day!), but it can hold 60-65 mph for ever, and run for about 4 hours off a full tank of petrol. We know the road pretty well, and knew that the 140 mile each way trip would take us about 3 hours. Which was perfect on such a day.

The trip down went perfectly, and we arrived at the museum on schedule. The museum is a bit of a surprise. Its larger than you expect, with maybe 250 exhibits, and covers a wide range of cars, from 1886 to the mid seventies. Although some of the British cars are relatively easy to see at shows in England, there are quite a few Europeans that I have never seen anywhere else. A thing that I personally like is the fact that even though most of the cars are in good condition, only a few have been restored, and therefore most of them have some damage. In a funny way, this makes the collection a bit more authentic, and gives a nice feeling that is hard to describe. Even though we did manage to take a few photos, its not allowed, which does detract a bit. But, all in all, I could recommend it for a visit. After spending a leisurely time looking at the exhibits, we had a bit of lunch in the cafeteria, and set off for home. And the adventures began…

Coming away from the museum, we were travelling at maybe 45mph about 50 yards behind an HGV, when suddenly, for no apparent reason, he slowed down, fast. Initially, we thought that this was for a tractor, as we had passed quite a few, so my only reaction was to slow down also, and come up behind him, ready to overtake the tractor. The road was too blind to overtake, so we settled in behind him. Imagine our surprise when a few hundred yards later, he did an emergency stop! Not only that, he then proceeded to cut off our means of escape by pulling over to the left. Luckily, we did not crash, but the Dane did learn a good few new choice English words, especially when we found out that his stop was caused by the fact that he had seen his destination!

Then came the beginnings of the next part of our adventure. By this time, we had maybe about 30 minutes petrol left, so as we were entering a large town, we started to look for a garage. We found two, but these were the kind that we call “automats.” That is to say, you put a banknote in the petrol pump, and it you get petrol to that value. We put in the only Danish banknote that we had that it would accept, and got some fuel. However, we knew that this amount was not enough to get us home, so we had to make another stop later. We weren´t worried, because we knew that there was a Motorway Filling Station about an hours drive away, so we headed off for it.

When we arrived there, we filled up Scooby, and decided to get some soft drinks, and have a pause. By now, the temperature had gone up to well over 30C, and we wanted to get some fluids in us. I filled the tank, and my wife went in to get the drinks and pay. When she came out, I motioned to her that she should go over to the shade, started the bike, and rode over. As I was riding over, I noticed that to my left there was a woman of maybe 40 or 45 years exercising a Dachshund on a long lead. This stupid little dog decided to attack, and charged over. However, the dog must have been slightly blind, as well as stupid, as it missed Scooby completely, and went (I assume) between the front wheel and the engine! I stooped of course, and got off, not noticing that the dogs lead was trapped under my back wheel. Just a short way from its collar. It now belongs to the story that Scoobs´ exhaust is on the right, that is to say, on the same side that the dog was now trapped. So naturally, it wanted to get away. But couldn´t! So all that you could hear from the dog was “psst!” as it fried on the exhaust, then “yelp!” as it felt pain and jumped away, then “psst!” again as the lead drew it back. After the fun of this situation wore off, I moved the bike!

Obviously, the woman, who turned out to be German was upset. Streaming what I assume were very unladylike words, she bent down to her smouldering dog. This put a smile on my face as well, which obviously made matters worse. The reason for my smile was that as she bent forward, her loose summer dress came forward from her body. I dont need to give details of the rather good view, but as they used to say in an old television commercial “she´s not wearing any hairspray!”

Then, her somewhat younger friend came over, smoking a cigarette. Looking at the bike, she pointed out rather aggressively in German that Scooby was dropping petrol. This didn´t worry me at all, as this was normal when it was on the sidestand after filling up. What did worry me however was the fact that she was smoking, only a few yards from the pumps! So, difficult as it was, I turned my attention to her, and pointed out that she was smoking on a petrol station, and that was far more dangerous than Scooby dropping petrol. At which point she promptly threw the lit cigarette on the ground, not even bothering to stamp it out, and walked off with her still angry friend!

Luckily, the rest of the trip went well. We arrived back home a couple of hours later, tired but happy after the days events.

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