A much better month! Three events, two driving and one marshalling, all good and the car still running well – can’t be bad. The first was the Pheasant Plucker in Hampshire, Chris Scudder and I ran three TCs during the night and it didn’t stop raining all night. The right waterproof and warm clothing kept most of it out so bear that in mind when you come out to help on the Kent Rally 15/16th February 2003 (write that date on your next year’s calendar now and you’ll have your marshalling points before the season really starts, it saves all that fuss at the end of the year)!
We had two and a half crews out with Alan Sayers coming out best with a creditable 7th overall navigated by CDMC’s Bob Stokoe, Graham Child/Kevin Ablitt were 15th and 3rd Semi-Expert while Sam Collins/Oli North were 1st Novice. Well done all of you for keeping it going on such an atrocious night. The winners were Dominic Worsfold/Matt Fowle who dropped 7 minutes in the first half which was considerably tougher than the second half and even had the top crew Biss/Woodman looking decidedly panicky having dropped a code board on a hard to find triangle. The event was well run and a worthwhile part of the Rally 2002 Championship.
From here it was a trip up the A1 to Scotland. I travelled overnight to get to the cottage I was renting at about 9.30 on a very soggy Tuesday and I’d developed a cold on the way, but as I was on holiday it didn’t matter. I had arranged to have dinner with Bill Troughear, who is Chairman of the MSA Regional Committee in Kelso, that evening and a thoroughly enjoyable evening it was. The rest of the week was quiet until Andy Coshan, my nav., arrived at Edinburgh airport on the Thursday, the other two crews, Doug Kingsley/Ben Greenfield (B18MC) and Tony Michael (Chelmsford) arrived on the Friday evening and we were all set for the event on the Saturday. As there are only 150 people in Scotland and they all go to bed when it gets dark (those two statements are incompatible!) they start their rallies at 7.30pm finishing by about 2am, so we were due at the start at about 4.30pm. When we arrived we found to our dismay that they’d foolishly seeded us at no.1 with the world beating Mike Biss/Cath Woodman behind us.
Undaunted off we set from the start in Jedburgh to face the most diabolical navigation that I’d seen for many years. The first half started with out of order map references with directions of approach, which cost us our first code board (worth 15 minutes), then onto coded out of order MRs which turned out to be avoids if you plotted them really accurately and this cost us our second board and 13 minutes. Andy then got into gear and we were clean through all sorts of nightmare nav to TC9 at the end of a very difficult split tracing which included a farmyard complex in which we and Mike and Cath were almost formation dancing trying to find the way out and a tiny bit of trace which wasn’t actually on the map but indicated a long way round at a yellow/red junction, which we returned to having spotted it a bit late; this lot costing us another 5 minutes.  The next section involved crossing an arc drawn through two defined points six times and cost a further minute then going via three sets of intersecting lines defined by four references each, another minute and then disaster stuck in the shape of a circular herringbone using all roads and mirrored. This was a killer and we went OTL and dropped two more boards, then a section defined by specifying the distance of each road colour in each grid square but out of order, two more boards, and finally before petrol a section with three alternate sets of very complex set, the correct one to use depending on solving another clue, three more boards.
We were pleased to get to the petrol halt back in Jedburgh and lick our wounds (and a couple of chocolate bars). We’d dropped a total of 162 minutes leaving us 13th of the inter-association crews, Doug and Ben had dropped 182 mins and Tony and Paul 282 mins.
The second half was much easier with shorter sections with rather more do-able nav and we stayed clean for the next 16 sections until we dropped 3 minutes on a very awkwardly worded 4 mile section which saw cars heading in all directions. Then 5 clean sections to drop one minute at TC37 which was followed by my favourite bit of nav all night; the route card read ‘coloured roads only’ 1131.876 – just that! The answer was to find a 3 mile bit of route where the spot heights added up and converted from metres to feet(!) resulted in 1131.876, that cost us our last penalties of 4 minutes. Wow! What an event, the car went really well; the lanes were very wet and very slippy with a lot of standing water and a lot of leaves. We only had one potential nasty on a sweeping left-hander when Andy dislodged the tax disc from the screen with the map board which then skidded across the dash in front of me distracting my concentration (you know how much those things cost!) and we slid off into a ditch. Well, there was no way I was going to spend the rest of the night in some soggy Scottish ditch so I booted it and drove it back out, more by will-power than skill and we survived with only a little dent in the o/s rear wing.
The results took ages to sort and we got back to the cottage about 5am having come 12th with Doug/Ben 14th and Tony/Paul 23rd making us fifth team out of nine. Not too disappointing.
The next weekend we were back south on the Census Nightwatchman. We had two and two half crews out with me and Andy Coshan at 6, Alan Sayers and Bob Stokoe immediately behind us, Sam Collins/Oli North at 16 and Jason Mortlock with Bill Smith in Jason’s new Sierra 4x4 in the Clubmans event at 29. Unfortunately Bill had family problems and had to retire before the start. The navigation was testing with a set of standing instructions which have to be complied with a various points during the event but Andy coped well (Scotland must have been good practice) and we dropped six minutes in the first half, four of which came from one section in which we had to go back for a missed code board and I got a puncture just before the last competitive section but didn’t bother to change it until the link section and managed not to drop any time. We also dropped six minutes in the second half. This left us fifth overall, three minutes away from third. Alan Sayers didn’t finish and Sam/Oli were 15th having had a bit of trouble before petrol.
It was all good fun and was my last event for this year. I’ll be marshalling on the Preston and preparing the Kent. Talking of which, the PR will need to be done around the Christmas break so if you’re looking to burn off those extra pounds give us a hand. Iain Gibson is coordinating this (01474 873573 or 07808 923595) so please volunteer.
As I’m typing this, the Stage folks should be hurtling around Longcross on the last event of the year in the Rally 2002 Tarmac Championship so I hope we’ll have news of their success for the next issue. Iain and Andy Gibson are to be congratulated for winning Class A of the Rally 2002 Tarmac Championship in their Suzuki and coming third overall driver and 2nd overall navigator, well done.
You’ll find the latest table for our Rally Championship somewhere in this mighty tome and you’ll see that they’ve sewn that up too. With only the Preston Road (???) Rally to come their lead is unassailable with Graham Child and Kevin Ablitt in the Mexico and Alan Sayers the only other Sevenoaks crews out. I’ll be marshalling so I’ll fill you in with the details next month.

Chin