2016 marked the 7th anniversary of our charity Santa Cruise, and the sixth trip we have made to The Children’s Trust in Tadworth. With almost 100 Santa’s in attendance and close to 50 cars and campers taking part, we raised £1000 for Children affected by brain injury.
It all started at VW Heritage HQ in Shoreham-by-Sea. Classic car and VW owners came together, donned their fancy dress, and joined the Christmassy convoy, led by me, in our 1956 Splitscreen pickup – and we didn’t get lost!!
The streets of the South were treated to a seasonal spectacle, and it wasn’t only the drivers who were decorated; tinsel and fairy lights were common place across bonnets and bumpers of the participating machinery.
A large inflatable Santa bolted to the back of a Type 25 was hard to miss, but i think my favourite was the giant home-made beard and red hat sat atop a blue Type 25 demonstrating real yuletide creativity.
Commiserations to the creators of the festive Jack in a Box (last year they made an R2D2!) which sadly removed itself from the roof of their Type 3 Fastback en route; fortunately it didn’t cause any issues for other road users, and was collected to be displayed again once parked up.
The efforts embellishing vehicles was equally matched by the generosity of all those who came, with a mountain of gift bags left under the tree, ready for the children on Christmas morning. This was on top of the money already donated by everyone for taking part.
A huge thank you from all of us at VW Heritage; when we dreamt up this event in 2009 we never thought we would manage to raise £1000 with it, not to mention get together such a huge collection of gifts to donate. A quick mention should also go to the VW Heritage Directors, who cover the cost of us stocking the Santa suits each year, so all your money can go straight to the charity.
We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did, and maybe you’ll come back again next year to join in the festive fun once more.
To find our more about The Children’s Trust, please click here. https://www.thechildrenstrust.org.uk/
Merry Christmas
Andy
The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of VW Heritage