Through the (very) Low Countries ....

We are driving in a small red sports car through the ghastly post-industrial dystopia that is north-eastern Holland. There seem to be no ordinary roads – just a lattice of highways – and no ordinary landscape, acres of refineries and warehouses, and depots and factories, and truck parks and train tracks, and then water and barges and ships and bridges and flyovers. Everywhere there are trucks; on the road, by the side of the road, on barges and ferries, thundering next to us or static on acres of concrete.

Carolina looks glum. I look glum. I know this because the rear-view looking glass (as Spooner insists on calling it) can’t reveal what is on the road behind us, because of the trunk strapped tight to the boot, but can be freely adjusted to look at the sunset, Carolina’s glumness, the transit of Venus. Whatever.

‘Can’t you find us a better road?’ I suggest, in a voice now more cross than glum.

She fiddles with the map, of little larger scale than my prep school atlas and nearly as old, she suggests an exit and we turn off the motorway. Now we are in the same landscape but going half the speed, the route now dominated by endless roundabouts and road signs in Dutch.

Our destination in Germany seems a long way off.

There is surely a long list of activities guaranteed to stress any relationship, but high on the list must be map reading in foreign countries. But at least the car was behaving itself and the wings hadn’t fallen off. Yet.

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By his early twenties Eric Siday was a successful jazz violinist playing for the Piccadilly Revellers and then the Jack Payne band. One gets the impression life was pretty full-on; performing several nights a week into the early hours in smoky clubs, or hotel ballrooms; booze, pretty girls and maybe even, fame. He was at the top of his game, not exactly handsome, rather boyish, but I can see that could have been appealing, and he could certainly play the fiddle. It is hard to get a feel for what fame would have meant in the mid-twenties. Nothing like the craziness of the worthless renown that can be generated by the social media of our times, that’s for sure, but it came with a pay packet that most twenty-somethings could only dream of.

Then the question was how to spend it?

Eric was a bit of a speed-freak and on his weekends off, would get together with a bunch of like-minded petrol heads, and head for a house he had rented on the south coast.

So, what car did he favour?

There were dozens of fine cars you could buy at the time, but mostly they fitted into a niche or price range that selected their buyers. A Riley would be a safe bet; reliable and popular. An MG, perhaps with a blower, a bit sportier, a Bentley or a Lagonda really only for the very rich and not a young man’s car.

But buy a Frazer Nash, and you could the next week, enter it in a rally or in innumerable sprints or handicaps. Tune it up a bit, perhaps get the factory to fit a supercharger and you could be racing at Brooklands, or somewhere similar, and yet it would still take you to the pub and impress the ladies. Nashes were not cheap, certainly unrefined, and not paragons of reliability, but were fast, hot and fun. (Actually, thinking about it a bit more, little has changed!)

Eric bought a Frazer Nash, competed here and there and then swapped it for a newer model, the Ulster, very sleek and low with a supercharged Anzani engine. In the spring of 1932 he decided to enter the voiturette class (1500cc) in the Nurburg Grand prix. Surely a crazy idea, but what the heck!

How to get there?

Ask your girlfriend to navigate, get a ferry to Calais and drive to the High Eifel.

I know this because in his archive, extraordinarily deposited in the New York City Library, contains a piece written by him about the trip:

‘It was after eight o'clock and twilight was already falling over the little village of Adenau situated in the heart of the Eifel Mountains, eighty or so miles west of Cologne. The journey had been particularly exhausting, especially for my wife, who suffering from the heat and discomfort of the mechanics seat in a racing car, had accompanied me on the rather hectic, almost non-stop dash from Calais that same morning. The mudguards which I had fitted in compliance with the law, had broken loose on the appalling roads of Belgium, and she carried them in her lap at the further expense of comfort. However, the extremely gracious concierge of the Brietzeuhoff, welcomed us with the dignity and dispatch one associates with the arrival of Royalty, and I remember feeling that somehow there must be some mistake, and that sooner or later he would discover that the two muddy dishevelled people were mad Englishmen entering their car in the national Grand Prix, whereupon we would icily be informed that there was no accommodation. He soon allayed my fears when he told us that he had guessed that we were entrants in the race, and he was proud to inform us that nearly all the drivers were residing at the Brietzenhoff.

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Nearly ninety years later Carolyn and I are in the very same car, having the same arguments. The human behaviour hasn’t changed, but the landscape certainly has.

Our trip got better. Finding a way through the demonic lowland labyrinth that is principle introit for consumerist Europe, we imperceptibly entered Germany and the landscape softened with small scale agriculture and pleasant villages. Once within striking distance of Dusseldorf, we took time out at the unusual landscaped collection of the Museum Insel Hombroich. This was just what was needed; a wilderness garden, charmingly blending beautiful old trees with more recent, but now mature, plantings, studded by sculptures of stone and iron and somewhat random brick pavilions. It doesn’t completely work but it was the perfect way of spending a couple of hours while awaiting our rendezvous at the bahnhof. Here we were meeting Robin and Andrea to board the overnight express to Innsbruck. We swung into the loading area to find a fine selection of European classic cars. Behind us a Ferrari, a TR4 and a brace of classic Mercedes. It turned out these were not first timers, having oft used the overnight train as access to the driving opportunities of the Alps and Dolomites.

The train was late departing and arriving but finally trundled into sunny Innsbruck and we were crossing the Brenner pass into Italy, and down the long descent into Veneto.

Robin’s dynamo had died but the charming and helpful staff at the hotel in Mestre found a local fettler who promised to make a new bush which allowed us to enjoy most of the day in Venice.

The next day we would jump on the ferry to Igoumenista and then our tour of Greece would properly start.

So far so good. As Robin sagely reminds “well, we’ve got this far….”

That is all you can say; so far so good.

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Eric Siday moved to the US before the war and became a pioneering composer of electronic music working with the inventor Robert Moog. He focussed on commercials creating themes for Pepsi and the classic Maxwell House coffee advert of the seventies with its plinky-plonky tones of dripping coffee.

He died in 1976 a rich man. He had married for the second time into a devout Jewish family and left his monies to Jewish charities in New York. His archive was left to the NY public library. Thankfully Covid lockdown led to enhanced online access to the records held in the library and it was there that I found the article about his trip to the Nurburgring. His legacy and some of his quirky music lives on.

I am proud to rest my bum in the same seat as he.