Jaguar Car weekend!

Some of you may remember that for the Charity Auction at the Award Ceremony last year, Jaguar Cars very kindly donated to us a 'Jaguar Car Weekend', which allowed the winning bidder to drive around in a beautiful Jag! The winning bidder was our great friend and supporter, Sandy Auden - and she's kindly sent us this account of her exciting experience!

"I don’t really know what came over me on June 19th 2009 at the DGLA Award ceremony. I was merely sitting in the sumptuous Magician’s Head Quarters, listening to the charity auction run by author James Barclay, unaware of what was to come. A number of items had already been sold but then the ‘Win a Jaguar for the Weekend‘ prize came under the hammer and something stirred deep inside me. Before I knew it I was waving my hands in the air, frantically trying to get James’ attention and place my bid.

Now, my dad was a car mechanic and he loved to drive, something he passed onto my brother but I’ve never really had any interest – or so I used to think. Somehow the chance of driving a luxury sports car for an entire weekend for £150 plus petrol appealed at a level I hadn’t known existed and when my bid was the winner I was chuffed to bits. I was also expecting my non-driving other half to be annoyed with me but within 24 hours of the event, he was waving hotel brochures under my nose so we could plan our weekend away with the car.

So what did I get for my money? Well, Hazel from Jaguar smoothly sorted out all the paperwork – just the usual stuff when you’re hiring a car. I didn’t have to pay anything extra at all - delivery, pickup and insurance were all included and I had a choice of models and dates to book. In the end I settled on a weekend in September and an XK convertible, with the car delivered on Friday morning and collected again late Monday afternoon.

We got booked into a hotel in Windermere – that had the essential private parking! – and selected a range of walks to cover everything from torrential rain to sunshine. Well, we all know how wet the Lake District can be but our Jaguar Weekend was almost magical. The rain cleared up on the Thursday and Friday dawned dry and bright with blue skies and warm sunshine. I set off a little tentatively, still getting used to the controls, but they're an easy car to handle so by the time we came off the motorway, we were more concerned with getting the roof down and ensuring the radio was blasting out Mr Blue Sky by ELO as we snaked down the Lake District roads.

The car was excellent – comfortable, luxurious and packed with gadgets (thank goodness for the parking sensors in the bumpers). It’s such a powerful, smooth drive that it's difficult to express how gorgeous it was to be behind the wheel. We did have some hairy moments on the narrow Lake District roads but nothing serious; and the built-in Sat Nav seemed to be determined to take us down the most challenging routes it could find (I wish I'd known the difference between shortest route and quickest route before we had the car!).

The weather held for the entire weekend and the roof of the car was rarely in the up position. It was nowhere near as windy in the car as we expected and the whole experience of freedom, power and luxury has left me pining quietly to repeat the fun.

It’ll be interesting to see if the 2010 DGLA ceremony will give me a chance to do it again. Bring your cheque book with you everyone, those Jaguar cars are good enough to start a bidding war...."

Thanks Sandy!