Alex in first carting crash

A trip to Haynes International Motor Museum ended with Alex eating steering wheel.

The museum itself is by far the best motor museum I have been to. It’s far better than Beaulieu – many many more cars and in my opinion a far greater coverage and range of vehicles than Beaulieu.

It started with the Red Room, and just got better every step – See HERE for my photo’s.

The Red Room

Although he took a blow to the face, he was not put off of cars or racing – but he is a bit tender at the moment.

The £1 a go electric kiddie cars were calling us, so after seeing other parents go around in these slow cars with their toddlers on their laps, I decided to do the same.

I was impressed as Alex picked up throttle control and steering pretty quickly. Once the £1 had run out, he got into another car and I perched on the back as he seemed pretty happy with the controls. As he pulled away I went to hover my hands over the wheel just in case… but he beat me by hitting the tyre wall before I had a chance to do anything.

Now as you can see, these cars really don’t go very quickly, so the little bump really shouldn’t have caused any problem, but Alex just wasn’t ready.

I launched over the top of him – catching ‘myself’ on the top of the car as I cleared him. I just caught a glimpse of him face planting the padded steering wheel.

It was a softened impact, but still enough to split his top and bottom lip, and the skin on his chin just below his bottom lip. Moments later and he had a runny bloody nose too. There were tears and blood – lots of blood… I must admit to feeling pretty disturbed to have a handful of Alex’s claret in my hands.

I stemmed the bleeding and after a while (and a few toy cars from the museum shop) Alex was over the shock and initial pain. I felt pretty bad, but these things happen, and I know you can’t wrap kids up in cotton wool to protect them – you just have to be there when they get an ouchy. It’s part of the learning curve (show me a kid who hasn’t had cuts and bruises and I’ll show you a kid who has spent their life in a padded box).

His lips became quite swollen and it took a while for his chin to properly stop bleeding, but he’s in great shape. He had to drink through a straw for a few hours, but that soon got better.

He looks at the video and tells me it hurt, but it was fun. He’s not been put off cars one bit – It would take a lot more than that, and lets face it, he now has a story to tell reporters when he is a Formula One Champion about his first time driving and hitting a tyre wall!