Food and Fuel, Shelsley Walsh 2025
Emotional Blog #002
September 2025
Welcome back.
This month's blog post is about food and fuel at Shelsley Walsh. It was a bit of a last minute idea as we were feeling the itch that only the smell of petrol and sound of a hard cut limiter could scratch, but we were pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was. The nix of having both the static display, as well as the paddock being open and cars running up the hill all day meant that there was plenty to see and do. Also, the mixture of all sorts of different kinds of cars was nice and refreshing. There was a bit of everything, from supercars, full blown track missiles, classics, weird unexpected things like lifted Volvos and even a (world's fastest) garden shed!
Now I will preface this by saying that I watch a lot of YouTube and most of these channels fairly religiously so if it sounds like I'm talking ill of them I'm not, but Youtube events I feel always have to walk a line of cool and cringe that they often fail to follow. A slightly narcissistic display, and a gathering of people there to just fan boy/girl over the one individual but this wasn't that. Sure, there were YouTubers and other content creators there but I think because food and fuel is its own separate entity it doesn't feel like its "xyz's" show but more a show that these people are going to be at and they're going to bring some cool stuff and cars that are almost characters on the channel in their own right. They weren't the primary focus but were still obviously a big reason a lot of people came and it worked really nicely in my opinion. On top of the static display and various trade stands, the food and obviously the cars running up the hill there was all 3 of the AutoAlex main channels with Top Dead Center and All The Gear as well as other people with their own personal channels like Dad Cars and Boqer123 even if they didn't have a trade stand necessarily it was nice to see their cars and them dotted around the place which brings me onto the cars of these channels.
Seeing some of the cars that you have watched people build from in some cases, a totally standard car like Alex's E46 M3 Touring or a rotten, crashed, broken, flooded or burnt out piece of shit like a lot of channels seem to be doing recently into whatever they've decided to make and actually seeing it in person, hear it starting and smell the fuel its burning just makes it really feel so much more real and tangible as something you could do too that much more so than just seeing it once a week behind a screen. some of my personal favourites I saw were Alex's M3 touring, Taylor Heatherington's E24, Boqer's e36 (no surprise its mostly BMW's because I am a bit of a slut for some good Bavarian engineering). Also the microcar Top Dead Center brought purely because of its absurdity and watching it crawl up the hill using every ounce of assumably duck power (I'm not sure its big enough for horsepower) was just pure childish entertainment.
The static portion of the show located on the side of the hill below the food, there was a really nice and widely varied selection of cars from a trio of Italian job replica classic minis to a track prepped civic, M cars, Cosworths, econoboxes and everything in-between. of course there was the usual suspects of an inclusive show with the stereotypical mk2 ford focus owner who has suffers with a seemingly incurable case of colour blindness... well either that or an intention to make their cars appearance hurt those of us who are blessed with the gift of sight. Now (before I'm plastered all over the uk mk2 focus owners society or whatever they call themselves) I'm all for shitbox appreciation and inclusivity, but! you can build/modify a shitbox or a cheap and inexpensive car well even on a budget as has been proven by so many people before. It may require more work, creativity or help from your mates but it is entirely do-able.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is I liked that there was a focus on not focusing on any certain type of car or build, you had classic cars like a lovely and really thoroughly oem+ 2002 turbo, lifted Volvo estates, street cars, track cars and the odd bit of rare or more expensive stuff sprinkled on top instead of just jam stuff or just stance stuff or just VAG's on rotiforms and air, but at the same time it would maybe be nice to see a slightly more selective application process to make sure whatever it is you are letting in, that it is at least well done and not another purple hahahahahahah joker liveried vauxhall zafira with only 3 wheel trims. The whole was spaced out and set up very nicely though, a bit of this and that just spattered everywhere so that nothing was sat next to another car just like it. the word of the day truly was variety. Just next to the display was the trade stands which whilst there wasn't loads and loads (mainly YouTube channel sponsors and some more local automotive businesses the area) there was a nice selection and they did have some nice bits on display and running up the hill in forge motorsports case with their RX7, they also had some nice discounts for people there on the day and as always were pleasant and ready to chat with you about whatever you were interested in.
The food part of the event was also really nicely done, all sort of dotted along the side and the top of the static display area but also close enough to the hill that you don't have to miss out on too much of the action whilst stuffing your face was really nice, there was even a nicely set up covered area with a load of benches underneath so that you didn't have to eat on the go or carry it up the hill to watch the hill with your food and if it rained (as it was planned to) then at least you weren't going to be eating damp food. There was also a wonderfully varied selection of different vendors from BBQ to Burgers, there was an asian noodle rice bao bun truck, coffee, donuts, wings and pizza... see what I mean when I say there's something for everyone in all aspects of this event? obviously there were queues around lunchtime... I think some vendors even ran out of food at one point but this isn't down to them necessarily, I think since food and fuel have said they had like at least half of the attendance tickets sold in the like 3 days leading up to the show because the weather forecast did change quite drastically from RAIN to the wonderful sunshine and breezes you can see in the photos we've taken, so from a planning perspective its almost impossible to guess something like that would happen when you're prepping food and stuff for an event so I wouldn't hold it against the vendors or the organisers.
Overall we both had a really nice day out and enjoyed the show, I personally will be keeping an eye out for their next location announcement and be keen to see how Food&Fuel grows and develops in future. I really enjoyed the mixture of having both static stuff and genuine motorsport (a skid pad in the car park and some donuts isn't quite the same in my opinion sorry) going on, it gave enough variety that you could go back and forth between the areas throughout the day and not get bored or it feel repetitive. Solid day 8/10.
