My Ormskirk MotorFest lap

A FERRARI Enzo, a Frogeye Sprite, a brace of E-Types and a Noble with a Boeing-esque wing on the back.



It's not often you get to keep pace with such an eclectic collection of sports cars, and certainly not on Ormskirk's one-way system. Luckily, I have a 40-year-old MG that's more than up to the task.



If you were at last Sunday's Ormskirk MotorFest, you'll probably know by now it wasn't just a success in a vague, it-wasn't-a-flop sort of way. By noon, both the town centre and Coronation Park were swarming with people, and not just the usual bunch of sad petrolheads (i.e: me) either. Maybe it was the cast of cars and bikes that'd turned up or the unexpected sunshine, but something about seemed to capture the imagination of thousands of visitors.



I loved milling around all the old Triumphs (two and four wheeled) but I was also lucky enough to get a perspective few other visitors got; I actually got to drive the closed one-way streets in a classic car. A classic car that had encountered two different breakdowns less than a fortnight earlier. Boy, was I nervous.



Yet once I'd crawled out of Coronation Park and got onto the streets, the nerves faded away. Here I was in the event's only MGB GT, with the full-length sunroof open, cruising past streams of excited children asking their parents what all these strange old cars were. They absolutely loved it.



I've seen a couple of clips on YouTube since and seen what the thousands of visitors saw; a crisp Seventies GT car, burbling around Ormskirk with the sun bouncing off the chrome and the deep, throaty exhaust ricocheting off the shop front windows. Then again, I was out of the MG just in time to see the F1 cars and the superbikes strutting their stuff, and they sounded epic. The scream of the Saudia Williams as it scorched past the parish church is one I'll never forget.



I'm lucky enough to have experienced Ormskirk's MotorFest on several different levels; as a participant, as a visitor, and as a journalist covering it for The Champion. I'd like to use what little influence I have with this column to make a plea to Aintree Circuit Club and West Lancashire Borough Council on behalf of everyone who enjoyed it.



Please, please do it again...