I will apologise now to those of you who are not rally fans, but this column will be dominated by the Rally of Kent.

Well what a great day it was. It’s fair to say that the event has been a bit of a roller coaster. Five days before the closing date we had only thirty-two entries, then it seemed that everyone remembered it was on and we finally had sixty starters. Given the current climate (see last month’s column) this was exactly the figure we had calculated would run. Set up day was not too nice with snow, sleet and rain but fortunately whilst Sunday was very cold, it did remain dry and on the whole everyone I spoke to seemed quite happy with the weather.

Will Nicholls and Nick Broom won for the fourth year, but they certainly didn’t get it all their own way with Marcus Dodd putting in some stunning times until he found one of the culverts in Bedgebury which tore a wheel off.

There were a number of club crews out on the day, illustrating the growth of rallying within the club and they finished as follows:

Stefan Davis/John Bond 12 o/a 2 in class

Paul Hands/Lee Naylor 14 3

Paul Stevens/Mark Hickman 16 10

Rob Sartain/Robert Fisher 31 6

Paul Mayhew/Rosie/Jones 34 8

Mark Instance/John Bridge 39 9

Ric Lee/Gary Wood Tried to move a tree and the tree won!

Allan Sayers/Bob Stokoe Rolled on stage 2

So it’s congratulations to the winners and commiserations to those who did not get to the end (I hope the ribs are a bit easier, Gary).

So now the planning for to 2007 starts and I suspect that it won’t be long before it’s here.

By the time you see this, our first sprint of the season at North Weald will be over and the Speed League will once again be under way.

We shall also be hosting a Scalextric evening for all the family at our new venue on 12^th April from 7.30pm. We are bringing in a professional track for this event so please come along with all the family.

Finally we shall also be holding our AGM on 19^th April and naturally all are invited to discuss the club’s activities. I look forward to seeing you all there.