The Renault 4 Club Nederland celebrated its own jubilee in 2001, and staged a grand gathering at Arnhem, in the east of the Netherlands, on the weekend of the 7th to 9th September, to coincide with the recent 40th birthday of the R4. A review with plenty of pictures follows, and you can also view a ten-minute video of the event.

This article has been rehoused and reformatted in 2010, and the original negatives of all my own photos have been rescanned. Click any thumbnail for the photos and plenty more info.

I drove in my own R4 GTL, accompanied by my brother navigating, whilst my sister and her boyfriend travelled in their red GTL behind us. We set off from Hove in Sussex, England at 5:30 Friday morning, just reaching our ferry from Dover in time at 8am. It was a long drive through France, Belgium and Holland to Arnhem, and we finally arrived at around 16:00 local time. We did, however, get lost at least twice, adding around fifty miles and over an hour to our journey. Blame that on the lousy instructions I printed using Autoroute Express Europe. Unexpectedly, it wasn't until we were a mile away from the campsite that we spotted the first R4 of the day. We were getting worried that we wouldn't see one at all and that it had all been cancelled. Once through the gates of the site, however, we were in some kind of dream world, with R4s of every type, age, colour and condition around every corner. It was a very good campsite with many facilities, and rather than having one large boring field like many British sites, everything was sectioned into small areas surrounded by hedges and lush greenery. I would recommend the site and the surrounding countryside to anyone planning a holiday in the Netherlands. Unlike most of the country which is flat, the Arnhem area and the nearby National Park (Park De Hoge Veluwe) are very picturesque.

We weren't too lucky with the weather. The whole weekend was a strange mixture of torrential downpours and rays of sun, but it didn't spoil things too much. On the Friday evening we were handed a bag of goodies, containing a special edition plate to attach to the car, a commemorative t-shirt, tickets for the various events, lollipops, sweets, an R4 pen and notepad, some playing cards, and various other bits and bobs. After a great meal and a few drinks in the restaurant, my sister and I set off walking in almost pitch black darkness and drizzle to investigate some of the cars around the site, meeting a few late night revellers on the way.

Saturday morning, and we had a browse around the stalls selling R4 spares and accessories, though I was unable to fulfill any of the requirements on my shopping list, which consisted of silly bits and pieces that I'll probably never find anywhere. We then got our directions for the tour, which would take most of the day to complete. All the R4s set off throughout the day on a fixed route around the region, completing about sixty miles. There were stops for various attractions, including a mustard factory in a local town, a Dickens museum situated in the Netherlands' smallest city, a working windmill, a classic car museum and a toy museum, all with free entry to the R4 drivers. The tour encompassed the winding roads of the hilly national park, crossing a river on a car ferry, stopping off for a free apple and a chance to fill out an R4 quiz in the forest, then a stop at an ice cream shop, all accompanied by the frequent spotting of Renault 4s around every turn (often going the other way because they were lost).

Later that evening, all the guests gathered for a special celebratory dinner, at which the organiser, Ronnie Peters, gave an address. And I ended up at the end of the night, unsurprisingly, in the bar on the other side of the site, taking further jibes from my fellow travellers about my 'moist tent', which appeared to be lacking any kind of waterproofing device when compared to everybody else's.

On Sunday morning, everyone awoke to a loud air raid siren, prompting R4 drivers to take to their cars in a long procession to the Openlucht Museum a couple of miles away. Fortunately, I avoided this noisy onslaught by taking a hot shower to alleviate the dampness I had endured in my soggy abode; I'd have been better off sleeping in the car than the tent!

Unfortunately, we were too late getting packed up to join the procession, but we made it to the museum later on, having been given our free breakfast bag.

The R4 exhibition at the museum had taken a long time to plan, and drivers were under strict orders to arrive there before 10am if they wanted to drive into the museum grounds and join the Concours d'Élégance parade. Sadly, our return journey to Britain meant boarding the ferry at 21:30 and we needed to exit the museum by 15:30 to be able to make it on time. So, we had to remain parked outside along with many other drivers, as all cars inside the grounds could not leave before 5pm. I hardly think, however, that either my sister's or my own car would have won any awards, considering the number of other sparkling examples on display.

Most of the cars lined up inside the museum entrance for the public to view, with more parked in the centre of the grounds. The Openlucht Museum occupies a massive site covering several acres, and has many buildings and exhibits demonstrating Dutch rural life through the ages. There is a tram which travels around the site stopping off at various points of interest. Again, I would recommend a visit here to anybody taking a holiday nearby.

Also housed in the museum was an exhibition of the history of the R4, containing advertisements and promotional material from the last four decades. Some of this was fascinating, particularly the hilarious poster designed for the Renault 4 Jogging special edition, which featured some ladies and gents attired in 'trendy' matching jogging costumes, circa 1981; very much of its time. There was another chance to buy various R4 products from the Dutch club's stall. I would have bought the lot if I'd had the money, but I settled in the end for a Renault 4 wallet, which I later bored everybody to death talking about because of its many wondrous compartments.

All R4 owners had free tickets for refreshments, and after lunch I set off to complete the arduous task of photographing as many of the attendant R4s as possible. Many of the vehicles set off on a parade around the grounds of the museum before returning to the concourse. I had to give up on the idea of snapping every car, but did manage to get pictures of the majority of them. We thought we had travelled far enough from the UK, but we encountered other fans from as far afield as Rome, Oslo, Ireland and Japan!

So, we had to leave early, which was a shame as I understand that the remaining Renault 4s returned to the campsite for an awards presentation and closing ceremony later in the afternoon. The drive home was long and dangerous, as we had to plough through torrential rain much of the way on flooded motorways, with spray everywhere and poor visibility, even with the wipers on double speed. Both myself and my sister started skidding a few times but managed to keep control. We did, however, meet a crazy Renault 4 on the way that kept playing tag with us. It appeared behind us just as we approached the tunnel at Antwerp, and we overtook each other a few times for the next thirty or forty miles, drawing up alongside each other to wave and make faces. We managed to capture a brief moment of this on the video (see bottom of the page).

The rain died down but the winds battered our cars as we crossed the plains of northern Belgium and France at dusk. It seemed at some points that the cars might topple over, as we could feel the impact of the wind upon driving, especially when overtaking lorries, and I think the weight in the cars with all our luggage kept us upright.

The worst was yet to come, however, when we boarded the ferry across the English Channel. We had been warned by Dutch R4 owner Peter Pigmans at the museum earlier in the day, that there was a strong gale on its way across the Channel and northern Europe that evening. We were travelling on one of the modern, small, fast Hoverspeed boats, as opposed to the traditional large ferries, and this made the crossing much worse. All seemed well as we set off, but as we watched and laughed at the safety video, our laughter turned to horror as the captain announced that we should stay in our seats because the sea was very choppy. As soon as we broke out of the harbour at Calais, the boat started lunging to and fro, tremors went through the vessel as it crashed into waves, people struggled to walk around, duty free goods fell off the shelves and staff looked anxious. Through the side windows, we could see the lights of the shore plunging up and down and it felt like being on a very badly designed rollercoaster. Most people put their heads down and tried to avoid throwing up. The large P&O ferry that we overtook on the way looked a picture of tranquility in comparison, but as we neared Dover things calmed down.

The drama was still not over, because when we drove off the ferry towards passport control, my sister had a flat tyre. The customs officials were actually very helpful, however, and fetched us a trolley jack straight away, so it only took a few minutes for my sister to change the wheel. Both our cars survived the trip very well, although later in the week my own became almost undriveable due to a broken near side driveshaft, which I had to have replaced.

So, all things considered we had a great time and thought it was all well worth the effort and cost to attend. The event was a great success, and I'd like to thank everyone who helped organise it. I hope there'll be many more in the future. There had clearly been a lot of hard work gone into preparing everything. I would guess this might be the biggest R4 gathering there has ever been, or there ever will be, but let's hope that R4 appreciation will continue long into the new century.

In the above entries, you can find rosettes next to the pictures of the award winners from the Concours d'Élégance.

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Arnhem Video

Video footage of the Arnhem gathering was shot by my brother Ian, who accompanied me in my Renault 4, with some additional camera work by Will Henry who travelled in my sister's red GTL. Most of the scenes are from the Saturday, both at the campsite and during the tour of the region. The camcorder battery died whilst on board the river car ferry, so there was no power left to capture anything from the museum the following day. However, I added some stills into the film to make up for this. During our journey back to England on the Sunday evening, the battery offered some last, intermittent bursts of power, which provided a few random shots out the car window near the end, concluding with a view of my sister's R4 at Dover docks just after the tyre was punctured on the ferry ramp.

Credits

Credits are shown at the beginning of the video, with a couple of omissions. Here is the full list:

• Camera: Ian Gumbrell
• Additional Camera: Will Henry
• Original Film Editing: Ian Gumbrell
• Computer Editing and Production: Peter Gumbrell
• Original Music: 'Aah Four Nova' by Peter Gumbrell
• Camberwick Green End Title Theme composed by Freddie Phillips; this version produced on an Ensoniq KS32 synthesizer by Peter Gumbrell
• Incidental Car Stereo Music: 'We Have Explosive (Herd Killing Mix)' by Future Sound Of London; extracts from 'Logical Progression' album by LTJ Bukem; I would be grateful to anybody who can supply details of the very English sounding piece of music in the final scene
• Additional Images From The Museum: Marieke Michielsen, Martin Jonker, Ian Gumbrell, Peter Gumbrell
• Special Thanks To: Matthew Gallop for production materials; Tonia Gumbrell for general assistance throughout the event; Ronnie Peters and R4 Club Nederland for organising the event

This video Copyright 2001, 2003 by Peter Gumbrell for Renault 4-Play.

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