This turned out to be a very wet route, on what was an even darker and stormier night than last Thursday was. I'd commented to The Gnu that on Thursday evening the other cars seemed quite content to let the Alfa discover all the puddles along the A24 - this time, they were a bit impatient and tucked in close behind before overtaking. This lasted until, oh, somewhere along the approach to Pulborough where I discovered not so much a puddle as a small pond at 30mph. It made a rather impressive bow wave up and over the nearside of the car (it was hidden round a corner, and quite hard to spot - my reaction to discovering it was along the lines of "What-- *SPLOOSH*").
For some reason the other drivers hung back a bit after that :)