the first exploratory trip to Vermont, blessed with snow and poor visibility for much of the run north of Bennington. Vermont route 9 is traditionally referred to as the Molly Stark Trail in honour of the wife of General John Stark, victorious at the Battle of Bennington. The odd thing about this is that Stark and his wife were from New Hampshire, which has Stark’s most famous words on its license plates, and the battle was actually fought ten miles away in Walloomsac, New York. It was towards Walloomsac that our route took us, the more direct journey on US 7 south being disrupted by bridge repairs in Williamstown. Instead we took one of my favourite roads south, NY route 22, through Stephentown and on to Hillsdale. The day which had dawned overcast and mild had become quite warm and it was tempting to make a detour to the nearby Roe-Jan brewery, but we stuck to our task and continued south. A few miles south of Hillsdale we diverted on to some county roads around Ancramdale before crossing over the ridge and dropping down to Millerton. We then headed towards Sharon on CT 361 but turned off to run around Mudge Pond and join CT 41 east of Sharon for the last few miles through Lime Rock, Falls Village, and then on to Canaan and journey’s end at the Great Falls Brewing Company, just over 600 miles from the start. Our purpose in doing this was of course to raise money for the Hole In The Wall Gang Camp, and as we go to press we are just a little shy of our target which was $10,000. There is still time to donate, which you can do by visiting https://www.ctbrr.org/the-charity and clicking on the button marked “Click Here to Donate to the Charity” For the second year running we unfortunately had a car that failed to complete the run. The good news is Matilda’s case is that the problem was not as serious as it had appeared at the time. Farmington Motor Sports was able to restore Matilda to working order quite quickly. The Run is well within the capabilities of well maintained and regularly driven cars. If you have such a car and want to see how well it will perform on an extended tour then you might want to consider next year’s Reliability Run. We will be going to the Finger Lakes Region of New York and have booked rooms at the Hope Lake Lodge near Cortland, NY. Those rooms are going fast, so if you want to be part of the fun the time to act is now, leave it till later and you may have to find your own accommodation as this is a popular hotel and will be sold out by next spring. If you are interested, send me an email at nwardle2@comcast.net