Polly Irvine’s memories of the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run date back more than half a century, to her early childhood. And, as with so many of the ladies we have interviewed, this is very much a multi-generational affair.

To my recollection, I've done the Brighton Run, either in a tender car or in an entrant car every year, bar one, for 55 years. The year I missed was when I was just about to have my hip replaced so it was just too difficult to change gear. I made up for that two years ago, though, when I had heart surgery and did the event four months later!

My father, Adrian Whitelegge, was always a car enthusiast. Long before I was born, he had acquired a 1930 4½ litre Bentley. Obviously, that was a vintage, not a veteran car, but he used to drive it on the Veteran Car Run as tender vehicle for his two great friends, sisters Grace North and Val Guinness.  And I would go with him. I’m one of five siblings and went every time. One or two of my siblings would join us from time to time, but I was a constant because I just loved it. I remember driving back from Brighton curled up in the footwell of the Bentley, next to Dad’s feet; I must have been tiny, because that’s not a big space. I think I was about five at the time, and it was freezing cold, of course!

In 1986 my family moved out of London to Oxfordshire and Dad bought a Humberette – which I still see on the Brighton Run every year – and then he went bananas and bought a 1904 Darracq. He drove both cars on the Run over the years, but eventually sold the Humberette because it was so impractical, too small. The Darracq is only single cylinder, eight horsepower and apparently has a top speed of 25 miles an hour, though I don't think we've ever managed that, so the Run takes about eight hours. But the Humberette was even smaller and even slower. So Dad sold the Humberette and he kept the Darracq and when he died, 11 years ago, he left it to me. And it moved from Oxfordshire to Lincolnshire, where I live.   

My first ‘go’ at driving anything other than a modern car was when I got behind the wheel of Dad’s vintage Bentley. It’s an absolute swine. It's terribly heavy, the pedals are in the wrong order, it's non-synchromesh and I’m too short! I’m 5’4” on a good day and I would sit, perched on coats, with the seat right forwards, and then tried sitting on old phone directories. But it wasn't going to work, so I wasn't very good at that at all. But when Dad got his first veteran, the Humberette, I found it so much easier. I would drive it round and about at the house in Oxfordshire and then started driving the Darracq as well when Dad bought it.  

The Veteran Car Run has been a family ‘staple’ since my father’s early days driving the Bentley tender car, and my own children have been immersed in it since infancy. The Darracq is rear entry and you enter through a door in the middle of the back, climb up a step and go through a gap between the seats and sit left and right. But once I had three children, that was always only ever going to cause rows. So when they were little, we used to put a plank across the gap so that whoever was the smallest at the time would sit on the plank, resting against the door. 

Perhaps my favourite memory of the event is when my eldest son, Angus – who is now just about to turn 31 – was less than 12 weeks old.  He was in the Darracq as we drove over the start line with us at Hyde Park, and then we passed him over the heads of total strangers to my mother, who was standing at the back of the crowd. She then took him home and had him for the day while we went down to Brighton and back.

It's absolutely in the genes, in the blood. Of my three children – two boys and a girl – it’s my 25-year-old daughter Isobel who is most passionate about the Darracq. They’ve all had a go at driving it, Isobel most often. She drives it instinctively and isn’t at all wary of it. You can’t be really, or you’d never use it: you just get in and drive it, and if it doesn’t work, you fix it!  You adjust your driving, you adjust the machine and you crack on. I’d say that she’s the natural successor to me, as I was to my dad.  Just don’t tell the boys!