Nearby Düsseldorf located, surrounded by a fantastic and beautiful park landscape with lovely arranged gardens you can find Schloss Dyck. A very beautiful castle from the 17th century. The history of the castle is very long and exciting. Today it is the centre of garden art and landscape culture.
German Goodwood
But of course, in the community of petrolheads the castle is better known for the Classic Days event at the first weekend of August every year. Starting as the Trips Memorial in 2006, very well organized by a small team of enthusiasts under the lead of Marcus Herfort, the event had been growing over the years. Some people call it the „German Goodwood“, the garden party for classic cars surrounded by the great landscape of Schloss Dyck. The passion for classic cars and lifestyle of the community is omnipresent.
Schloss Dyck: Familiar Atmosphere
The atmosphere at this event is always very familiar, the spectator’s arrive in period clothing, most of the time the weather was brilliant. When you enter the space there is a place name sign with the following words: Real World Classic Days. This looks very funny, but it is a bit like this, you leaving the Real World and entering a space of passion and enthusiasm.
International guests are at the Festival, such as David Piper, John Surtees, Derek Bell and Sir Stirling Moss, just to name a few of them. From Germany some former racing drivers: Jochen Mass and Hans Hermann, Hans-Joachim Stuck, Walter Röhrl, Roland Asch, Ellen Lohr, Klaus Ludwig and many more.
The park landscape was full of great and very rare cars, every year there were new attractions, new surprising things to see. I had the honor to be a part of the event photographers team to capture every aspect of this event.
The cars were not only displayed, there was an almost triangle „race track“ nearby where the drivers present their cars at demonstration laps, not that flat out, but fast enough to get an impression of the sound and the performance. One of the best photographing places is at the end of the „Bergahorn Allee“, the huge trees look a bit like the columns of a cathedral and create with an interesting game of light and shadow the perfect background for classic race cars.
My archive of pictures of the Schloss Dyck Classic Days is very large, the here shown will give you an impression of the beautiful set up over the years.
After 14 years the last two events in 2020 and 2021 were postponed due to the Covid-Pandemic, now the Classic Days left Schloss Dyck for many reasons and found a new location for this year. In 2022 the Classic Days will take place in Düsseldorf, traditionally at the first August weekend. It will be „greener“ and with a perfect standing for the future. The situations at Schloss Dyck became more and more difficult due to many causes such as the traffic and the space to expand.
So, the area of the Exhibition Centre in the northern of Düsseldorf seems to be perfect in many ways, the infrastructure is much better and there is enough room for expanding and growing and for presenting all the aspects of the Classic Days which we all love.
I am looking forward to this new location, it will be exciting to discover this place, finding new hotspots of taking great pictures and capturing the new, maybe different atmosphere.
But I am sure that the Classic Days will be great as ever. Hope to see you there. And lets keep the good old times at Schloss Deck in memory.
