After filling one of the car parks outside the factory we were given a tour of Lord Austin's office and the muesum which includes a number of landmark vehicles from MG Rover's past, through to more recent examples such as the 1,500,000th MG built (a gold MG TF) and the burgundy Rover 75 that is the 5,000,000th Rover ever built. Neither were ever registered.

The timing of our visit coincided with the anniversary of Lord Austin's Death in 1941 and it seemed only fitting that we drive to Lickey Church to lay a wreath on the grave of the man who's enterprise gave most of our cars their name. We did not stay for the wedding that was about to begin, though, and proceeded to Beacon Hill for a picnic lunch! Thankfully the sunshine we ordered did arrive giving us a relaxed couple of hours to eat, drink and talk about floppy headlinings, power steering upgrades, forthcoming events, Philips televisions... and all the other matters of great importance that usually get debated at an MMOC gathering!

Our half hour run in short convoys took us past various areas of interest outside the MG Rover plant, the Austin Village built in 1917 to house Austin Employees and a ford (of the wet variety) through which a line of five or six Maestros and Montegos could be seen driving Italian Job style after emerging from underneath a narrow bridge.