We're still suffering from Foot & Mouth and there's no light at the end of the tunnel. If you lot gave up eating meat it'd help! Nonetheless, rally school is still going and there will be a few table top rallies to keep the brain in gear. Also I might try and run a pub rally when the weather gets a bit warmer.
So much for the future, bleak though it is, lets look back to the good old days when we went road rallying. I promised a report of the Kent so here goes.
The preparation for this year's event was late in starting, the Spotted Dick, being a new venture for me, involved a lot of work at the time I would normally be preparing for the Kent (yes, I know I should have started earlier to compensate - but that assumes that I have a brain!). Nonetheless, I had a lot of help from Sue Speller and a few others without whom the event wouldn't have run. Following a conversation with Howard West of MMKMC and generally good bloke (and Forest warden!), the notion of using a bit of forestry was formed. The idea was to add a bit of variety without upsetting the neighbours, but it was not to be, Forest Enterprise wanted £500 for the privilege! (watch this space - I'm not giving up.) We were running rather more easterly than usual using 189 and our 'own' 188 and this meant finding a new start and finish venue. Several years ago we had been introduced to the pleasures(?) of gliding by Philip Holliday through the auspices of the Kent Gliding Club near Charing and this establishment provided a good place to start. The event started on a white which proved fun for all as it wasn't damaging or difficult. The finish took a little more negotiation, as I wanted to go back to the hotel finish with a decent breakfast as we used to get at the Brands Hatch Thistle. I wanted to use the Great Danes, near Leeds Castle, both for it's location and from nostalgia; one of the first events I ever did was an Autocross which was run in the grounds of the Great Danes Hotel back in the late 60's (they'd not welcome us tearing up their lawns nowadays!). After some negotiation we got the cost down to a bearable level, although I sweated over this commitment as the entries failed to come in.
Whilst the sorting of venues was going on we were running out the route and beginning to sort the navigation which was even easier than last year in order to make the sport enjoyable for both crew members. The lanes on 189 are just as enjoyable as those on 188 and we only problem we had was CTRL (that's the Channel Tunnel Rail Link to you who don't live in Kent) who are digging up large areas of land near the A20 and provided a few headaches where they'd blocked lanes or installed traffic lights, but a few re-routes sorted that out. The news of the forestry charge came through about a month before the event and, as the original route was a stretch of boring A road to Kings Wood and another boring bit back, without the forest this was totally pointless. We therefore substituted a piece of fresh route to make up the mileage - thanks, Chris Scudder, for PRing it at the last minute. 
So there we were, all set for a good rally - but where were the entries? At the Committee meeting 11 days before the rally we had only 17 entries and I was very downhearted with a commitment to the finish venue which would see us losing money at that entry level. Fortunately, by the Monday closing date we were up to 26 which was a few more than last year and enabled us to make a small surplus, it also meant we had an event worth running.
Mark Dawson had a small nightmare on the day of the event when he discovered that we were short of some posts for the TC and Code Boards, but, being the stalwart that he is, he had that sorted by the night. So we were all set for the Kent of 2001.
The entry was made up of four Masters, four Experts, five Semi-Experts, eight Novices and five in the Clubman event. With Steve Cole/Bob Blows off number one I knew we'd have trouble taking any time out of them but, as you'll see later in the story, Sue's cunning plan worked. Ian Orford/Peter Barnard who usually play down in the south west were at number 2 followed by the LCAMC rally champion and, this year, their coordinator, Paul Wright with Brian Jaggs, both from East Anglia and finishing off the Masters were Matthew Fowle/John Upham from the Central Southern area, so you can see we'd people from a fair distance coming to play in Kent. Our own crews were Alan Sayers out with Croydon DMC's Bob Stokoe at number 12 and Mick and Chris Rose leading off the Clubmans event. All the rest of our people were busy running the event.
As I mentioned earlier, the first section left the Gliding club via the white and the first route check was round a big but tight as map triangle in that section and this caused a few problems with 7 crews missing the RC and 16 dropping time. The rest of the first half went as expected with some of the novices struggling against OTL towards petrol. The petrol halt was at the Maidstone Services off the M20 and here I found that the Kent Police wanted to talk to me. They only wanted to ask me to have a word with our drivers who had been 'driving like maniacs causing complaints from all over the county'! I said I'd have a word before they started the second half. As last year the beginners in the Clubmans event had problems with tiredness in the second half I cut out the first six sections of the second half for them and sat with them in the Service Area making sure that they all got the rest of the route plotted before they set out again. This put them back on schedule and allowed them to enjoy the rest of the rally. 
For the rest of the crews the first few sections after petrol were where I'd hoped to take a minute or two from the leading crews by surreptitiously delaying them a little before they tackled the series of hairpins in Queen Down Warren. This tactic worked, but not for Steve and Bob, car 1, as they just scraped through on time. The eventual winners, Ian and Peter, dropped one minute at TC30 and another at TC31 and that was all they dropped all night. With Steve and Bob still the only unpenalised crew running we fell back on Sue's cunning plan which was a bit of really fiddly navigation for the Masters only - a long herringbone using all roads -through TC42 and here they went off route and were temporarily lost, causing them to drop 7 minutes. Were they happy? No! But that's what it's about - the other Masters managed that section OK. The rest of the event was pretty straightforward and most crews got back for a welcomed breakfast. I was looking forward to some grub but the competitors saw to it that I was kept sufficiently busy to maintain my diet - thanks! 
Despite my fears before the event and the hysteria on the part of the Kent Constabulary Traffic Division we had one of the best Kents of recent times. My thanks go to all of you who helped. Under the skilled management of Chris Scudder we manned 48 TCs and 5 Passage Checks - well done everybody!
The Rally Schools are continuing, despite the lack of events, and are on the fourth Wednesday of each month at the Bell, Kemsing from 8.15pm. I'm also looking to run a tabletop rally to keep the frustrated crews happy fairly soon - watch this space.

See you soon.

Chin

STOP PRESS….RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP

As the Rally world is being severely curtailed by the Foot and Mouth
Epidemic I'll have to see what's left of the calendar and try to arrange a
new list for this year - it may get so bad that the championship becomes a
nonsense and that will mean more decision making! Watch this space.

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